


Gallant Darling, Pray for Me

by SinceWhenDoYouCallMe_John



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Priests, Catholicism, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Smut, Here be sex in churches, John Watson is a Priest, M/M, Mentions of war-related death and violence, Monastery, Period-Typical Homophobia, Priest Kink, Sherlock Holmes is a Priest, World War I, You Have Been Warned, and sex between priests, vow of silence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-02-11 06:21:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 84,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12929364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinceWhenDoYouCallMe_John/pseuds/SinceWhenDoYouCallMe_John
Summary: The priests at the seminary school of St. Sebastian's on the coast of Wales, including Father John Watson, are preparing for a new group of ordinands in the fall of 1927.Father John Watson is not prepared for one of those ordinands to be Sherlock Holmes.





	1. He Browses Among the Lilies

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is about priest kink, pure and simple. If that's your thing, welcome! We've got windswept shores, ancient monasteries, sexual tension in candlelit chapels, and all the cassocks and dog collars you could ever want.
> 
> Be prepared for plenty of historical and religious innacuracies, random Bible verses and prayers, and eventual smut in churches. If you think this isn't your thing, no worries! I will say that this fic will not end up taking any sort of black and white stance against religion, either organized or personal. However religious issues regarding homosexuality and homophobia will definitely come up.
> 
> "Gallant Darling" is one possible translation of the gaelic "Mo Ghille Mear." (Another common translation is 'my gallant hero'). A FANTASTIC arrangement of this song can be heard [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxjvNUNXhkU/). I've listened to this song while doing all my brainstorming for this fic, in addition to plenty of monastic choirs, which I will include links to in future chapters!
> 
> Now please sit back, relax, grab your rosary, and enjoy my favorite fic trope of all time :)

_3rd September 1916; banks of the River Somme, France_

 

_“Our Father, Who art in Heaven –”_

The blood is too thick on my hands, and the soldier’s guts are spilling over my fingers into the earth. He screams, shrilling over the whistling of the bullets.

_“Hallowed be Thy Name –”_

The sky is raining fire. Dirt clods pounding against my rusted metal helmet. I clutch at my rosary, stained red and clenched against his bleeding organs. He’s trembling, wailing out into the void of the bombs.

_“Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done -- ”_

I can no longer even hear my own voice. The earth swallows us up into the belly of its steaming trenches, and I realize I will never again look up and see the sky.

_“On earth as it is in Heaven –”_

He’s bleeding out. He’s dying. I skip a few lines in the middle, and my throat is weeping and sore.

_“Lead us not into temptation –”_

The earth is crying tears of blood. Mud in my eyes and dripping down my face. I anoint the soldier’s forehead with the sweat from my own brow, pressing on his forehead and his shoulders and his chest.

_“But deliver us from evil –”_

His eyes are wet. They’re red and fixed on me - staring at the strip of muddied white nestled over my throat.

_“In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”_

He dies, sinking down into the deep red mud and still clutching at the smoking gun in his hands. I wipe off my dripping rosary on my stained and tattered uniform, crawl on my belly through the smoke to the next wailing body. 

This soldier’s leg is missing. He clutches at my arms.

 _“Father,”_ he cries.

 _“My son,”_ I say. I could not be more than two days older than him. I duck from a bomb blast, covering my neck and face with my arms, hurling myself across his open body against the shards. Then I yell into his face, his trembling hands gripping at the rosary in my fingers, stained red.

I begin again.

_“Our Father, Who art in Heaven –”_

He screams.

_“Hallowed be Thy Name –”_

He dies. I save my voice and anoint him with the sweat pouring down the sides of my neck, soaking the dog collar tight around my throat. Quickly from his forehead to his shoulders to the center of his chest.

Then I crawl across barbed wire to the next body hidden in smoke, gnarled and weeping and calling out for his mother, covered in the mud from the Somme.

_“Our Father, Who art in Heaven –”_

_“Mummy!”_ he screams.

_“Hallowed be Thy Name.”_

 

\--

 

_3rd September 1927; St. Sebastian's, southern coast of Wales_

 

I splash my face with icy water in the dark, then slowly kneel until my knees are against the cold, hard stone. I press my forehead to the floor and feel His warmth descend upon my back.

“Lord, open my lips. And I shall praise Your Name,” I whisper into the ground. He hears me as He always does, and His spirit hovers over me in the darkness. There is a smile on my cold lips, and His name tastes like milk and honey on my tongue. It is our time together, and I relish it.

“Oh God,” I say. “Come to my aid. Oh Lord, make haste to help me.”

The new ordinands will arrive today, dressed in fresh cloaks and cassocks and clutching gleaming prayer books in their hands. They will be eager to serve Him, and eager to listen. They will walk, as I once walked, up the path winding gently along the edge of the rocky shore, with the smell of the sea in their noses and the cry of the gulls in their lungs. They will hear His voice in the roar of the waves. And they will bow their heads as they enter through the blessed door of this sanctum, and they will commence their years of learning everything He has put into place.

Out of the misty darkness a solemn bell tolls, echoing in rolling moans out across the moors. It is the bell for Lauds, and I cannot be late. I prostrate myself once more, and feel His hands on my shoulders.

“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”

I press my cheek to the cold stone, and wonder once more at how He has chosen me to live. At how He hovered over my destitute body and rescued me from the bloody shores all those years ago. Eleven years ago today that He saved me.

I tremble with undeserved gratitude. 

“Alleluia.”

 

\--

 

This view is my favorite in all the world, save that of the Blessed Virgin in our Holy Chapel, quiet and cloaked in white.

This view is of the sea. I lean on my elbows out the sturdy stone window and brace myself against the salt on my face, gazing at the lonely gulls flying out over the cold, grey waves. 

I think for the thousandth sinful time that maybe I should feel lonely as well - hidden in a monastery at the edges of the earth, tiptoeing through silent halls and sacred candlelit corners. Where the voiceless moors stretch out along the shore as far as the eye can see, and the weeping stone surrounding me aches under the force of the spray.

Except I’m not speaking to the stone when I open my lips, when His name is in my mouth before the sun even rises. I speak out my prayers into the silence, but He hears me.

I ignore the tiny pain in my breast that still says, _“but I am alone. All alone, like I was on the shores of the Somme.”_

Quiet footsteps behind me, and I take one last deep breath of the air and turn once more into the room, spreading my arms.

“Welcome, Brothers,” I say gently. I only ever speak gently.

“Father Watson,” they say together, heads bowed calmly at the floor. 

They remove their hooded cloaks one by one, fabric billowing in the stillness of the air. I wait patiently as they pull out heavy wooden chairs to sit, seated in our circle around the seminar table.

“Hales.”

“Kiernan.”

“Thomas.”

"Harrows."

One by one they give their names, and I solemnly nod my welcome. They are all so young, none of them over twenty-two. So young and bright and small in their robes. Their eyes light up at the insides of this place, as if the Spirit is hiding in every crack in the ancient walls, silent and waiting to be discovered like a secret. Eager like the Seminary is a game to be won. They remind me of the soldiers their first day on the march, loose-limbed and open-mouthed and brimming with life. They remind me of the boys I watched die eleven years ago, fading down into the wicked earth beneath my hands.

I gently shake my head out of the memory. The last ordinand in the circle still stares softly down at the table, silent after all the others have given their names. His hood is up.

“Brother,” I say, “and what are you called?”

The man next to him answers for him. “He is Holmes,” he says. “He’s taken the Vow of Silence. Father Colmas has told us.” His brow is furrowed slightly, confused that I didn’t know.

Something sparks in the back of my mind from the night before. Father Colmas did indeed mention this, I remember now. It shames me that I can’t remember a single word from that meeting. I’d been lost, gazing out the window at the sea, thinking that it had been ten years and three-hundred-and-sixty-four days since He’d saved me.

“Of course,” I say. I stack my notes in front of me, the same handwritten scrawl that I’ve read off for the past nine years without deviation. “Your hood,” I say gently to Holmes where he sits, hands folded, at my right. 

Long, thin fingers reach up from under the edges of his thick, brown cloak, grasping at the hood and slowly pulling it down to rest against his back. The fabric swishes softly against his skin, and his fragile wrists fall away to reveal a long, slender neck. Pale skin disappearing into the folds of his ordinand’s robes.

A pulse shoots through me. For a blinding, wild moment, I think that I’ll reach out and run my fingers through the long dark curls that drape over his scalp. I think that I’ll hold a handful of ringlets in my palm, and draw my fingertips along his nape, and press him closer –

I silence my thoughts and pinch my own hand. My mind races as I look back down at my lap, blood roaring and mind floating and His name on a blessed loop in my mind.

_Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil._

_Lead us not into temptation, but deliver –_

“Father Watson?”

I nearly flinch, and look back up at the table of wary faces. I clear my throat.

“Forgive me, brothers,” I say. I smooth down the front of my cassock under sweating palms. “I was just praying for the beginning of our term.”

A lie. A blatant lie in His name. I want to leap up from my seat and sprint as fast as I can across the moors until I reach the nearest church and can give my Confession.

The man under the Vow – Holmes – shifts next to me. His eyes are still down at the table.

“Let us begin,” I say to them all, but my eyes are still on the side of his head. Staring at the way his jawline cuts like smooth marble. At the way his hair curls just around his ear, and the way his long lashes droop across the tops of his cheeks, and the way his throat –

I rip my gaze down to the papers in my hands, and a flurry around the table signifies the ordinands getting out their notetaking materials. Holmes doesn’t move. The sight of him sitting there utterly still yanks at my innards in a way I’ve never known could exist. It feels like hot oil, dangerously poured over my exposed and shivering skin.

I cry out to Him in my heart, an earnest plea as desperate as the prayers I wailed on the shores of the Somme eleven long years ago to this moment.

My chest aches when I don’t hear an answer in my soul.

They’re waiting for me, clearly thinking that Father Watson must be far older than he looks if he can’t figure out how to properly start a lecture. Comparing me to the lectures they’ve already had that day from my fellow priests, introducing them to every aspect of theology and the Word. 

I clear my throat again, and stand tall at my lectern, and I begin to speak the same words I’ve said every term without deviation, only I’ve never before felt this foreign presence of unsettled evil in my veins while I speak them.

“We cannot learn the history of the Church without starting at our foundation. With Christ,” I say clearly. “And it is from there that we draw our lineage and history. The years of faith and devotion that have come from those who have been Called before you, and this small glimpse into the eternal and loyal nature that is Christ’s love for his Church.”

 

\--

 

There is no oxygen in the room when I finish my lecture. The ordinands stand solemnly one by one and pack up their things, preparing to walk to their chambers. They flip on their hoods against the biting wind that whips through the stone corridors beyond the door. I nod at them and murmur their names as they exit, trying to learn each one. Trying to settle this odd twist of nausea in my gut.

When Holmes passes through, I murmur his name, too, and at the sound of it he stops mid-step. He looks up at me for the first time since he entered the room.

He looks straight at me, and my skin suddenly prickles with forbidden sweat. Some wretched, wicked part of me wants to cry out that eyes like his do not belong in this place – shuttered away in moonlit corridors and hunched over rosaries in the windswept dark.

_Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path._

_Thy Word is a lamp . . . Thy Word is a light . . ._

I blink hard and break our gaze, terrified at this trembling in my limbs. This previously unknown evil in my chest.

“Holmes,” I say again. The word crackles like fire on my lips, and I watch his chest hitch just barely under the cover of his robes. His Adam’s apple bobs on his neck, and his swallow sounds louder than all the echoing footsteps in the corridors combined.

There is something in his gaze, something I can almost see --

He nods, then turns to leave in one graceful movement. Long cloak billowing out behind him like a cloud, silently swishing through the mazelike halls of candlelit stone until he vanishes.

In a fog, I leave all my materials behind and walk quickly in the other direction, hand clutching my cane as I hobble across empty courtyards. Carpets of dead leaves whisper and claw at the bottom of my robes. I walk beyond the grounds of the monastery walls, out through the manicured hedges and tidy paths and groundskeepers’ and maids’ cottages until I reach the free moors beyond the reaches of the thick stone walls. The sun is starting to set out across the horizon as I wince at the ever-present pain in my leg, shame-faced that I’m limping and even more shame-faced that I should care at such a superficial thing.

I grimace at the foreign feeling of mud in my mouth. Of wicked dirt coating my eyes which I feel have somehow betrayed me. I look out over the waves moaning against the bottom of the rocky cliff, feeling the force of the wind against my back. I stand there, and I clutch at the precious rosary in my fingers, and I ground myself in the sacred feeling of my cassock blowing gently across my legs in the wind.

Then I pray to Him with such earnestness I nearly weep at the force of it. I pray that He will surround me with His mighty shield of Christ; protect me from this unexpected force that still burns sickeningly in my blood. 

“Cleanse me,” I say out loud. “Lord, cleanse me,” I beg, ready to sink to my knees.

 _“My child,”_ I hear Him say in my soul, and the restless waters before me suddenly still under His Calm.

_“My child, abide in me.”_

I sink to my knees in the long, wet grass. My fingertips twitch as they brush over the soft blades, and in a sudden blinding panic, I think that I am running my hands across a head of silken curls instead.

“Father!” I cry out.

I am back on the Somme, drowning in blood. I am back on the Somme, wailing out and performing my own last rites as I sink . . .

“Forgive me,” I whisper, not even knowing what for. Not knowing why this choking fear has settled over my limbs since the moment that last ordinand pulled down his hood.

“Forgive me,” I say again with my lips pressed to the muddy ground.

It isn’t a Confession, but it will have to do. He understands my soul, as I have known since I first learned His precious Name. He sees me.

When the bell for Vespers finally tolls, I look up from my ceaseless prayers at the now darkened horizon. The boiling sickness in my veins has calmed, and I can once again feel His warm palms upon my shoulders. I cross myself, and cherish the sound of His Name on my tongue, and then rise on my screaming leg to limp my way back inside the beautiful stone walls.

I’m halfway back across the moonlit grass when I see it. 

High up in the tower, in one of the abandoned old chambers, a glowing warm candlelight flickers in the window, like a lighthouse beacon blazing across the sea. And I gasp on a choked breath as I recognize the outline of a silhouette standing at its opening. It is tall, and lean, and draped in billowing robes in the breeze. Topped with a head of wild curls.

Watching me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -John served as a chaplain in World War I, and the battle described is the Battle of the Somme which took place between July and November of 1916 along the banks of the River Somme in France. It was and still is one of the bloodiest battles in human history, with over one million men wounded or killed out of a total three million who fought. Like I said, though, historical accuracy is not my major concern with this fic, so forgive any errors.
> 
> -The setting for this fic is taken from my favorite P.D. James novel "Death in Holy Orders." In her novel, Detective Dalgliesh investigates a murder at a Church of England seminary called St. Anselm's. During his investigation, one of the priests very briefly and casually mentions that there was a "homosexual scandal" at the college in the 1920's where an ordinand (a man who is on his way to being ordained as a priest) was caught 'in the act' with the priest who taught church history. And voila, a Johnlock fic idea was born! 
> 
> -The chapter title is from Song of Solomon, chapter 2 verse 16: "My beloved is mine and I am his; he browses among the lilies."
> 
> -John says parts of the Lord's Prayer in this chapter, as well as quotes Psalm 119:105 (lamp onto my feet). "Lauds" and "Vespers" are two different call to prayer times which would structure a typical day at a seminary or monastery.
> 
> This is just the beginning - there's plenty more to come! And it will definitely earn that explicit rating :) Thanks so much for tagging along!


	2. Until the Day Breaks and the Shadows Flee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To get a sense for their Lauds prayer service in this chapter, I recommend giving [this video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aah_ITLw3R8/) a listen. While this video doesn't have the call and response that Father Watson leads, it gives you a sense of how they sing their prayers.

_4th September 1927_

 

The black wind moans as I make my way through empty corridors, cane and footsteps echoing across the sacred stone. My heavy morning robes flow out behind me in a comforting rhythm, brushing silently across my ankles, and I fall with gentle step into the line of my fellow Brothers. 

My eyes burn and water in the foggy darkness, and the cold’s icy fingers grip hard at the exposed strips of skin around my wrists. I tremble with anticipation to see Him. I have not slept.

We walk towards the chapel in moonlit silence, footfalls muffled by a carpet of leaves, and heads bowed down to our cold and folded hands.

The earth is sleeping. It holds its breath anticipating His presence before the sun.

He is waiting for us, quiet and blessed in His sanctum. We enter the cold chapel, breaths fogging in the air, and a lone warbler flutters its wings among the rafters. We wait patiently, heads bowed, as Father Colmas lights the candles with his old and steady hand; a line of flickering gold keeping the feet of the Blessed Virgin warm where she watches us from her perch above the altar. 

“ _Merciful Christ,_ ” she whispers in our souls. “ _Hear the prayers from their lips. Hear their offering_.”

We silently turn and face each other in two rows like every morning, heavy cloaks rustling in the thick morning air. All is eerily quiet, and I feel the familiar warm thrum in my breast. The thrum that signals that they are waiting for me to sing – to use this gift He has given me to guide our pleading words up to the Heavens where He sits, the same way I’ve done every continuous day for nine long years before dawn.

I open my prayer book for Lauds, and rest my cane gently against my leg. Then I lick my dry lips, and the familiar words fall like jewels from my tongue.

“Lord, open our lips,” my voice sings in echoing melody into the silent darkness, winding its way up to the heavens through the rafters.

A chorus of warm, low voices surround me: “And we shall praise Your Name.”

I breathe in deeply, candle smoke and incense burning in my lungs. Oil from swinging lanterns and the gentle crackle of rosary beads. “Come, let us rejoice in the Lord; let us acclaim God our salvation.”

The chorus hums, “Let us adore the Lord, the King who is to come.”

My voice is a lark with a golden breast, flitting up towards the stained-glass windows on warm, silent wings. My lungs rise and fall beneath the back fabric of my cassock which clings to me like a second skin, and the cross around my neck is a warm weight against my chest, anchoring me down as He takes hold of my spirit.

Warm hands settling on my shoulders like an embrace.

“Let us come before Him proclaiming our thanks; let us acclaim Him with songs,” my voice cries out, dappling across the hoods of my Brothers like hidden sunlight.

The chorus rumbles, “Let us adore the Lord, the King who is to come.”

There is a tiny movement next to me, some barely perceptible shift at my left side. My eyes stray wickedly from the sacred words on my page – the words I have emblazoned beneath my skin. My voice breaks and cracks like broken glass on my next verse.

Because the movement on my left is Holmes.

It is the sleeves of his heavy robes, slowly slithering down his thin wrists to reveal his hands. The delicate webbing leading up to his knuckles. It is his fingers, long and pale and shimmering in the candlelight, caressing the open pages of his prayer book like silk. They trace over the words from my lips like flower petals, delicate and fragile and cupped in his palms. 

Somehow my voice continues to lead us in song, even as my eyes are riveted to the sight of his hands. Huge hands tracing across the pages of His words, softly rustling as they brush against the paper.

He does not open his mouth to sing.

His fingertips stroke each sacred line of ink, alighting across the sounds as they fall from my lips in a rhythm that beats in my veins. As if his pale fingertips are draped across my mouth. Quivering against my lips, growing warm from my breath, and reaching in past my lips to catch the words across my tongue, reaching inside my mouth and caressing my voice –

Somehow I’ve reached the end of the Psalm, and Father Ryland is now offering up our Canticle and Benedictus.

I’m breathless. My heart hammers like its beating outside my chest, ramming against my rib cage in sharp, painful bursts. As if my skin has been peeled away from my bones, and I am naked. In a wild moment of panic, I look up from the floor and glance at the lines of men surrounding me in the chapel. At my fellow priests I’ve stood beside year after year, and the fresh young faces who look up to me as Father. 

They are nothing but calm, gazing down in adoration at the sacred words on the pages, beautifully moaning in unison, “In Your light, God, we see light.”

And meanwhile my body is roaring. The fabric of my cassock prickles against my skin, and the collar at my throat chokes the air from my lungs, and the cross about my neck feels so heavy that I fear the skin at my nape will rub raw.

More movement at my left. I watch under the cover of my eyelashes, transfixed. Holmes lifts one long, pale finger to his lips, and a flash of pink tongue darts out to wet the tip, and he slowly turns the page of his prayer book as we sing. As his lips move silently along with our words, full and glistening from the wetness from his tongue.

_Lord, lead me not into temptation. . . lead me not . . ._

I’m ripped from my thoughts.

It is oddly silent, and I realize they are waiting once more for me to sing. My hands tremble like breaking glass against the prayer book in my palms, turned still to the wrong page from fifteen minutes ago. I know the words by heart, and so I nevertheless clear my throat to begin. My eyes flutter quickly to the front of the sanctum, where the softening candlelight bathes our Virgin’s feet.

 _“Help me,_ ” my soul cries. “ _Christ, what is this? Help me –”_

I open my lips to sing, “alleluia,” floating effortlessly up to His waiting ears. And at the first warm sound emanating from my throat, I hear another sound next to me.

It is a tiny, breathless moan in the stillness. 

It is Holmes.

Fire burns in a shriek through my veins. I somehow continue to sing, and I remain deathly still as Holmes shudders beneath his robes – his thick sleeve vibrating against mine. I watch out of the corner of my eye as his fingers tremble when he turns the page, following the lead of my voice. 

I want to drop to my knees and weep at our Virgin’s feet. Clutch onto her robes of stone and beg her to tell me why my heart is pumping black and wicked blood through my limbs. Why suddenly, fourteen years after becoming a man of the cloth, I now find myself naked and defenseless against this evil that hovers over my eyelids, cutting me off from His light.

Over and over again, my eyes stray to his hands, and I fiercely cannot understand why.

“ _You know why,_ ” the voice of gnarled blackness says in my chest. “ _Haven’t you always known why?”_

My heart clenches painfully. “ _Lord, cleanse me,_ ” it moans.

I nearly cry out loud with relief when the final “amen” of Lauds passes through my lips, and my Brothers silently close their books and turn to leave the chapel. Calm and ordinary as if nothing has happened. As if they weren’t just standing in the presence of sin. I fear I cannot breathe until I leave the chapel walls, and my eyes burn hot tears in the corners.

I whisper to Father Jacobs on my right. “Forgive me, I feel unwell. I shall see you all at Mass.”

He frowns, and I nearly flinch as his hand touches my shoulder. “But shouldn’t you eat breakfast to gain strength if you are unwell?”

I don’t have the vocabulary to express that porridge cannot fix this unwellness. I shake my head helplessly and repeat myself like a child. “Forgive me, I’ll see you at Mass.”

I leave quickly, brushing past Holmes and the rest of them with my hood left down and my fingers white and numb on my cane. I suck in a deep breath of air the minute I leave the choking walls of the stifling sanctum, and the freezing dawn air stings my eyes with relief. I clamor through the passageways and corridors, feeling that every familiar stone and crack and candle in my path is somehow now foreign and harsh to my sight. I have not felt a panic like this since the War. Since I was limp and bloody and dragging myself through the muddied red banks of the Somme performing last-second rites.

One more barren courtyard to pass through until I reach the safety of my small chambers, when a grasp on my shoulder halts me mid-step. I whip around, cloaks billowing behind me, and I gasp in surprise.

Holmes is standing there. His pale eyes are brilliant and full of concern, tracing the pained lines of my face.

They arrest me.

Suddenly the entire world is empty and still, leaving me and him the only two things alive. His fingers grip my shoulder, and their warmth bleeds through to my skin. I want to press into their grasp. Those fingers that caressed His words and made them achingly beautiful. Those fingers that I imagined pressing against my own lips, and stroking into my mouth in His church.

I’m holding my breath as I stare into his eyes, and it seems that even the dead leaves in the wind freeze their movements. His fingers on my shoulder twitch and adjust, and I suddenly imagine that his palm is moving – running slowly up my shoulder until it rests across my collar, and cupping the skin of my neck as I breathe, and tracing his fingers just under my jaw. Dipping his fingertips beneath my white collar to the hollow of my throat, fluttering against my veins while I shiver –

I step back with a jerk, and his hand falls away from my shoulder. I clench my teeth and look at him as if I have a knife in my gut, and that knife twists sharply when I notice that he looks afraid. His lips are parted, eyes lost and confused, and he is alone in the center of the fogged-in courtyard, hand still reaching out into thin air.

I am his teacher, his superior, his spiritual leader, and already I have failed him in every possible way. I’m filled with thick shame. Then words from Him suddenly glow bright in my chest, filling my frozen limbs with warmth.

_My soul melteth for heaviness. Strengthen me according to Thy Word._

I stand arrested as His strength fills me until my soul runneth over, then I settle my shoulders as I take a step closer to Holmes.

“Forgive me,” I say for the thousandth time this morning. “I did not mean to cause you concern.”

He blinks once slowly at my words, then suddenly drops his hand and straightens up to his full height, nearly towering over my form. He clasps his hands behind his back, head high. I fight against my soul’s urge to cry out in awe, since that is an emotion I reserve for Him alone.

And yet, he takes my breath away, just as He did the first time I set foot into His church. Five-years-old and awestruck and choking on the thick smoke of incense and candles as the chorus sang out, “ _alleluia, kyrie.”_

The wind groans through the cracks in the stone around us, and sunlight fights its way through the clouds and the fog. I suddenly, desperately want to speak with this man. Even though I will never hear his voice in return.

“Does your Vow extend to prayer?” I ask, glancing back in the direction of the chapel where his lips had only silently moved.

He nods once. Slowly. For the first time I notice the sharp depth in his grey eyes, rapidly scanning my face as if they’re reading from a book. A foolhardy, long-buried part of me wants to joke with him and ask him what my book would be titled. “Old limping priest who’s only good at singing Psalms,” or maybe “wretched sinner who was a good priest until two days ago.”

But he only looks back at me with such softness it nearly aches. He never once glances at my cane.

All at once, the moment between us turns stale. I clear my throat. “I'll be seeing you at Mass, Brother Holmes,” I say, as if he needs reminding. He only nods again, and I fight down a sharp stab of disappointment when he doesn’t say, _“Yes, Father Watson, until then.”_

I take a step back to leave, hating that my body doesn’t want to move away, when suddenly his fingers are tight around the bared skin of my wrist. My skin crackles with fire at the places where he touches me. I gaze up at him wide-eyed, and his eyes are uncertain for one terrifying, breathless moment. Then he gives a tiny little nod of his head, and he reaches in the pockets of his cloak and withdraws something small. I watch, lungs frozen, as Holmes gently pries open the fingers around my palm and places a tiny object inside. His skin against mine is like fire and ice. It courses through my body; sends shivers up the back of my neck, covered in a thin sheen of sweat.

His fingers are so long. So pale and thin against my own rough hands . . .

The moment lasts for less than a second – my hand in his. Then he’s gone, vanishing away into the shadows of the corridors as his robes disturb the carpet of dead leaves in his path.

I’m shaking. I look down at the object in my hand and see a tiny aspirin cradled in my palm.

He’d heard me say I was unwell to Father Jacobs. He’d heard me say that, and he’d come after me, and he’d offered me some relief which his Vow prevented him from speaking.

He’d grasped the bare skin of my wrist. Looked into my eyes and held me there and drew me closer, closer to his body draped in black --

I’m rushing back to my chambers as fast as I can, barely even bothering to let my cane touch the floor. I bolt shut my door and immediately drop to my knees on the hard stone. Throw myself down on my face before Him, surrounded by the bleak stone walls I’ve made my earthly home.

“Christ, my Lord,” I whisper into the ground.

Terrifyingly, I do not feel His warmth descend upon my back.

I am unworthy to speak to Him, I realize with a stab in my gut. I fumble at the sash around my waist for my rosary, then clutch the sacred beads in my fingers, pressing my cheek down into the stone until it hurts.

“Hail Mary, full of grace,” I moan out, instead. And still, I do not hear an answer.

My voice is hoarse and gasping as I continue, “The Lord is with thee.”

There is a strange warmth pooling between my legs, and I press myself harder against the cold stone floor. Tiny pieces of rock and gravel tearing at my black robes.

“Blessed art thou amongst women,” I whisper. I press myself harder against the floor. Harder.

“And Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

The warmth is still pooling, throbbing between my thighs. Out of the silence – the void left by my Lord – I hear a sudden noise burn like fire down my spine.

The moan. Holmes’ moan from the chapel in my ears.

I’m trembling. “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” I cry. The rosary beads clatter in my fingers as I shake, prostrate on the floor of an empty stone room.

“Pray for us sinners.”

_This sin I do not understand. . ._

_“But you do understand,_ ” the wicked voice croons. “ _You do understand. You’ve understood for years . . .”_

My hips are pressing, rolling, aching against the ground, and the fabric along the inside of my cassock rubs raw against my skin.

“Pray for us sinners,” I groan out again. “Now, and at the hour of our death.”

I press myself harder, mad and desperate against the floor. Press as his moan echoes like poisoned honey in my ears, and the sound of rubbing fabric fills the room until it’s deafening, drowning out the low, Blessed hum of my prayers.

Like a slap of ice to the face, I suddenly realize that there is an erection between my legs. Hot steel rubbing against my robes and the stone floor, leaking as my hips grind down into the ground while the sweat pools in droplets in the small of my back. Fiery hot pulses of sickening pleasure thrumming through my groin for the first time in over fourteen years.

My sinful flesh is thick and pressed up along my belly, trapped between my skin and the floor. 

I feel it leaking.

I cry out and hurl myself off of my belly, facing the empty ceiling with a pounding in my chest, and a roaring bell sounding in my ears like a siren. I’m gasping. I lift my head to look down at my body, still clutching my rosary in my fingers, then I cry out.

“Mother of God. . .”

My black cassock is tented obscenely, jutting up into the room with my hot and pulsing sin. I stare at it, nauseated. I think I might scream out like I did on the banks of the bloodied Somme, and then out of nowhere my mind remembers those long, thin fingers, tracing His words like silk as I sang. 

And they are reaching down towards the swollen skin beneath my robes, and dragging up the fabric to reveal my bare legs, and alighting on the throbbing steel rod between my thighs, and grasping, holding, grasping me there with his huge, pale hand –

“Mother of God.” I cover my face with my hands and feel wet cheeks. “Mother of God,” I whisper again into my palms. “Mother of God.”

I lie on the floor on my back until the sickening heat beneath my robes is gone, and the trembling in my hips has ceased. I lie there for a long time. Then I pull my hands away and press the rosary to my sinful lips. I feel dirtier now than I did even eleven years ago, covered in a mix of mud and blood and soldiers’ innards on my skin.

“Pray for us sinners,” my voice barely whispers. I kiss the beads. “Pray for us sinners.”

And there, out of the silence, my answer finally comes:

“ _My child,_ ” my God, my Blessed Christ, says. “ _John, abide in me._ ”

My legs feel like lead, and there is an ache in my chest, but I sigh with breathless relief as His palms cover my shoulders.

My path before me illuminates like the pages of His word: I will get up from this dirty floor, and brush myself off. I will wash my face and hands, and anoint myself with His oils, and after Mass I will walk to St. Ignatius college and thereby give my Confession.

_For all have sinned, and fall short of the Glory of God._

_For all have sinned._

I stare up at the ceiling with my fist clenched on my breast. I lie there and try to breathe as He shows me one more image in my mind, soft and veiled with something wet and grey like sorrow. 

He shows me Holmes, looking frightened and uncertain in the courtyard, my shoulder jerking back from his touch like a flame. 

He shows me Holmes, walking away back into his silence, head bowed and long fingers covered by his robes. Pale neck swallowed by the hood of his cloak.

He shows me Holmes, lips moving along with my voice, silent with the words he cannot say. Will not say.

I cross myself and wonder why He’s shown me these things. Why He’s reminded me of the reason for that depraved heat pulsing between my legs just moments ago.

Then I hear Him. “ _Guide him, as I have guided you.”_

My lips tremble as His undeserved love pours over me, covering my bones where I still lie on the hard floor.

“Kyrie eleison,” I whisper in the silence. My voice grows bolder. “Kyrie eleison.”

I heave myself panting to unsteady feet, reaching blindly out for my cane with my hand. The distant bell tolls through the corridors - the call to Mass – and I brush off my robes with still clammy hands, then splash my face with icy water from my basin to revive me.

I am exhausted. 

And as I exit my chambers to join the line of my Brothers, I pretend I do not feel the ghost of a touch gripping the bare skin of my wrist.

I pretend I do not hear echoes of a tiny, soft moan, rumbling from the depths of a cross-adorned chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -The chapter title is from Song of Solomon 2:17 "Until the day breaks and the shadows flee, turn, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or like a young stag on the rugged hills."
> 
> -"Kyrie eleison" means "Lord have mercy," translated from Greek, and is a common prayer in Christian liturgy. Pretty much every major composer since the dawn of time has taken a crack at writing their own arrangement for a "Kyrie eleison," and pretty much all of them are beautiful.
> 
> -John quotes from the Hail Mary, Romans 3:23 (for all have sinned), Psalm 119:28 (my soul melteth), the Lord's prayer (lead me not into temptation), and sings from the Invitatory Psalm (Psalm 94) during Lauds. 
> 
> -Lauds is part of the Liturgy of the Hours (also called the Divine Office or the Work of God). They consist, basically, of Matins (or now it's called the Office of Readings), Lauds, Daytime Prayer (often preceded by Mass), Vespers (evening prayer), and Compline (night prayer). I'll refer to these throughout the fic, so now you know roughly what time they're occurring at.
> 
> Trust me, this is just the beginning. It will get plenty more filthy :) And Sherlock's Vow of Silence definitely won't last forever...... Stay tuned! And thank you SO much for all of the kind feedback on the first chapter! I was truly thrilled at the amount of people who also proclaimed a love of priest!lock. In the religion of priest!lock, I'm basically a cloistered nun.


	3. And If the Pomegranates Are in Bloom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To get in the mood, here's a nice [Kyrie Eleison](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P59u9KhdNy4) to listen to. Apologies in advance for the random bird sounds that sort of ruin it. Pretty much any Kyrie Eleison you'd find on youtube would be worth a listen to.  
> [Here's](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwvERVq2uTI) another good version, this time without the bird sounds.
> 
> Content warning: this chapter deals with and mentions thoughts of suicide, although briefly. Do whatever works best for you!

_10th September 1927_

I have not seen Holmes in six days.

When I lead us in song before dawn, he is not there, with his long fingers tracing over the words from my mouth, or his silent lips moving in the faint light from the sun. 

When I roam the dark halls, echoing with my cane, his cloak does not disappear around the corners before me. When I sit in the library for tea, or bow my head to eat my simple food at mealtimes, there is a screaming absence of a tall, lean form. And when I teach, painstakingly going through each year of the Church while pens scribble madly around the varnished seminar table, Holmes’ eyes do not stare down at his empty hands while he listens, and the seat at my right is just cold, vacant space.

It calms me. I tell myself this as I walk through the grounds, nodding at my fellow priests and new Brothers alike. I tell myself this when my eyes stray down corridors, or look quickly over my shoulder as I pass through empty courtyards, or gaze across bowed heads at Mass and Vespers and want to scream out that one head is missing.

I tell myself it calms me, even though I do not feel it.

My Penance last week was tortured and fraught. I started off across the moors just after Mass, knowing I would be back in time for my lessons before Vespers. And I forbid myself to look back over my shoulder, eyes fighting with me to gaze at the lonely tower like Lot’s wife.

Hoping to see a silhouette at the window, topped with curls-- 

_Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, lest thou be consumed. . ._

_The Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven. . ._

_But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt._

No, I didn't look back over my shoulder. And Father Morey at St. Ignatius welcomed me with wide open arms at the door of his church when I arrived.

“Father Watson!” he cried, grasping my wicked hand. “Have you come to lead us in song?”

I tried to smile. “Nay, Father,” I said. “I’ve come to receive Penance.”

He sobered, hand falling quickly from my own. “Make haste, then,” he said. He murmured, “The Lord awaits.”

And so, I sat behind the dappled light of the confessional, breathing in deeply the familiar scent of wood and sweat and robes. Trying to stop the shaking in my hands.

“May Christ, who has enlightened every heart, help you to know your sins and trust in His mercy,” Father Morey began.

My lips trembled when I pressed my fingertips to them. “Amen.”

“Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained.”

In a flash, I thought of Holmes' chest beneath his cassock. Of the trembling in his arms beside me as I sang, and the sheen on his fingertip from the spit in his mouth-- 

“Begin, my child,” Father Morey said. I hadn’t realized how long I’d been sitting in silence. 

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” I whispered. “Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been eighteen days since my last confession.”

Father Morey hummed, his voice like warm honey, and I quietly gasped, clutching my hand to my breast.

“I have had impure thoughts,” I forced through my lips. “Thoughts of the flesh. . .”

His fingers on my bare legs, trailing up my thighs, pulsing and hot and aching. . . leaking . . .

“Thoughts of a carnal nature,” I said.

Father Morey hummed again, as if he knew this very thing was coming. “Take heart, my child,” he said. “There is nothing new under the sun. This is why we must rejoice in the Lord’s Calling for us, that we are removed from the desires of the flesh. That we may rest in peace surrounded by our Brothers, and not be lead into temptation by lust or women.”

I hunched over on myself, feeling pain in my gut. “And yet I’m still plagued by these thoughts,” I groaned. “During my time with Him. During . . . during _prayer_ –”

“You are yet young,” Father Morey cut in calmly. “It is natural you should feel the pull of a family and wife. Yet you have been chosen. Christ has Called you for higher things. This is a reason to rejoice, Father Watson.”

And I hadn’t . . . I hadn’t had the courage to correct him.

And for the first time in my entire life, since I first learned His Name, I had said my Act of Contrition, and completed my Penance, and after it all, I still felt exactly the same.

It was as clear as Christ's last words booming from the cross: He had not forgiven me.

I blink hard from my thoughts as we all rise to our feet in His sanctum. It is time for the Concluding Rites of Mass, and the golden light pours through the windows like jewels, flooding across our dark cloaks and turning them into a painting for His eyes. His eyes alone.

Father Colmas raises his hands above our heads. They do not shake. “May Almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” he cries mightily. 

A rumbling murmur, rushing through the church and around our ankles, like a thick wave spreading across the shore with its foam. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.”

I gaze upon the Blessed Virgin, and I bask in her warmth upon my face. For whatever reason, it does not pain me in my throat to look upon her. Not like it does to gaze upon the Christ, knowing there is black evil running through my veins. Evil that I tried to Confess, but could not . . .

“Ite, missa est,” Father Colmas finishes.

My Brothers all rise around me, and suddenly I want to force them all to sit back down. To go through the entire thing again, from the beginning. It doesn’t feel right to leave Mass this way, with my belly knotted in this turmoil, and His hands not upon my shoulders. 

Even on the Somme, even covered in death and blood, His hands had been there.

As we turn to leave in our quiet lines, I look back once over my shoulder at the altar. My mind tries to protest, _“But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar –”_

 _“My child,”_ the Blessed Virgin suddenly murmurs in my chest, and I nearly cry out in joy at the sound. I gaze upon her in awe, and water prickles in my eyes. _“My child,_ ” she says again, her delicate fingers hovering at my collar. “ _The Lord doth go before thee; He will be with thee, He will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed.”_

And behold, like the blast of the cold sea upon my face, like the first appearance of light in the Genesis darkness, she is there.

I bring my hands to my lips as the last of my Brothers passes through the doors of the Church, leaving me alone with her.

“Mother of God,” I whisper, awestruck. “Mother of God.”

Her voice is the gulls crying over the velvet waves. _“Fear not, and neither be dismayed. Fear not.”_

I gaze up to the rafters, and my blood feels clean. For the first time in over a week, I smile.

_“Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them. Receive ye the Holy Ghost. . ."_

I am forgiven.

\--

 

_12th September, 1927_

 

“Father Watson!”

I look up from silently contemplating my notes as I walk through the hallways to my study. Father Ryland is rushing towards me, nearly tripping over his robes.

“Careful, what has happened?”

He’s panting as he stands with his hands on his hips. A prickling black part of me takes a small joy in seeing this. Father Ryland is younger than me by almost five years, and I know I wouldn’t be that out of breath, even with my cane and my leg screaming under me.

_God opposes the proud, but shows favor to the humble._

I nearly stamp my foot like a child. The weight of my newest sin washes over me. I’d been doing so well. . .

“—if you could do it for me?”

I have absolutely no idea how long Father Ryland’s been talking, or anything he’s said before those last few words. I blink hard, mind racing, trying to catch up. The silence grows awkward, and he pushes his glasses up his nose.

“Forgive me, Father Watson, are you unwell?” he asks.

His face looks wary, and I realize I’ve been gazing just over his shoulder at the wall. 

“No, sorry.” I clear my throat and brush imaginary dirt off my chest. “Do you mind . . . could you say that again?”

He gives me a look, one that fills me with shame. It’s a look I only get every once in a while, but one I’ve nevertheless gotten from every priest and ordinand here over the long years. It’s the look that says, _“I know you were in the War. I know you cry out in your sleep. I know there’s something off in your head. So of course I’ll repeat myself, you were in the War, after all.”_

I hate it more than I hate anything else on this earth. More than Beelzebub himself.

Father Ryland finishes giving me the look, and I don't say the snarl in my head out loud, then he repeats himself: “Father Colmas has ended Brother Holmes’ week of retreat. He’s asked me to go and alert him, to be at Vespers tonight, but. . . well, you know he’s chosen that old room up in the tower. And the stairs. . . with my lungs. . .”

He trails off, and I take pity on him. “You’d like me to go and tell him for you?” I ask.

His face brightens as if I’ve just made him a Cardinal. “Yes, yes please, that would be wonderful!” He grasps my arm. “I am indebted to you, Brother. I shall see you at Vespers.”

Then he’s off down the corridor, walking so fast he’s nearly jogging. I stand in the silence dumbfounded. His words echo in my head: _Brother Holmes’ week of retreat. . . go and alert him. . . chosen that old room up in the tower. . . Brother Holmes. . . Brother Holmes. . . Holmes. . ._

I want to grab the front of Father Ryland’s robes and yank him around and desperately beg him tell me why Holmes was on a week of retreat. Why he’s been gone from Lauds, and gone from the corridors, and gone from my right side as I read out my lectures. Why he’s been gone from my sight.

Instead I stand absolutely still, and softly clear my throat. My hand sweats where it rests on my cane, fingers clenched tightly so the knuckles are white. I prepare myself for the wave of anguish to wash through me. For the fear, and the shame, and the blood curdling hotness to flow through my body now that I realize what I’ve just agreed to do. That I’ve agreed to go and see him, go and _speak_ to him, alone up in his chambers –

 _“Fear not! Neither be dismayed”_ she cries in my soul.

Like glass shattering, my limbs feel free to move. Free from the frozen ice I’d been standing in in the corridor. I shake my head gently and start to make my way towards the winding, narrow staircase, nodding at the Brothers I pass along the way. My leg screams as I start to ascend the quiet steps, and a part of my mind prickles that it’s odd that Father Ryland passed this off to me, of all people. Me: the priest who limps with his cane, and who frightens the new ordinands when he calls out in the night.

Me: the priest who thought of Holmes’ fingertips dragging up my robes, and pressing into my mouth.

I take small pride in myself when I reach the top landing without too much pain, and without any wheezing in my lungs like an old man. I limp down the echoing stone hallway, praying to calm my racing heart. 

_Fear not, fear not, fear not. . ._

His room is at the end of the silent corridor, crinkling with cobwebs and hidden in the late afternoon shadows from the sun. For some reason, I stop using my cane when I come near, and approach as silently as I can, tiptoeing on stone. It feels wrong to introduce such noise into his silence, when I know that he is speaking with the Lord behind these walls. I come to the heavy wooden door to his chamber, and I reach out my hand to knock, but before I do, my eyes flicker to the circular window cut into the wood door centuries ago.

At first I think the room is empty, for I see just empty space. Then my eyes spot movement down along the floor, and I follow it like a moth to the flame, and I feel the blood drain from my face at what I see.

It is Holmes, kneeling away from me on the hard stone floor and surrounded by open books and papers and His word. And it is Holmes, utterly lost, deep in silent prayer, bowing his head down towards the ground and humbling himself before Christ.

Holmes, without any clothing covering his torso.

Holmes, with his bare back caught in the light of the heavy sun, with his spine piercing through the smooth, pale skin, and the muscles in his shoulders flexing as he breathes, and a thin trail of sweat dripping down from the back of his neck. Down, down, down towards his shoulders, and down past his hips, and disappearing into the crevice –

My mouth is dry. I cannot move.

All at once, that sickening heat pulses in my groin as Holmes shifts, leaning over deeper onto the floor, flexing his spine and rolling his hips as he presses his forehead down against the stone. As he prostrates himself before the Lord while he prays, and clutches with his fingers in his curls, and gives a low hum, a low moan, before Christ. . .

I need to leave. Need to escape from this place. _Fear not, fear not, fear not._

He sighs.

Fire in my veins. An aching pressure throbbing between my thighs. Sweat dripping down my forehead like it’s dripping down Holmes’ back.

I shift, just barely, until my body is against the door. I lean my forehead against the cold wood to try and calm myself, and my hips press deeper without my consent against the rough wood. Warm, delicious pressure on the hard steel beneath my robes, pressing harder as Holmes hums again deep in his chest, and the sound of it vibrates thickly between my legs. . .

Without warning, a shuddering breath suddenly escapes my lips, echoing in the silence of the corridor.

He hears it.

He whips his head up from the ground and looks over his shoulder with a quiet gasp. His hair is disheveled. His chest heaving. Nipples peaked.

Piercing grey eyes meet mine in the shadows, blown wide open with surprise, and something else –

And then I’m gone, running down the corridor with my cane left behind. Flying down the stairs gripping the walls with my hands. I thank the empty Heavens when I don’t run into anyone on my way back to my chambers. I lock my door, fling myself down onto the floor, and I clutch His Word against my chest in the gathering dark.

 _“Fear not, fear not,”_ she somehow continues to say.

I cannot say anything back. I am not worthy. A black stain on the earth. So I slump against the wall and hold my Scriptures in my hands, feeling my heartbeat thump against the worn, leather spine.

_“Fear not, fear not, and neither be dismayed.”_

But I am afraid. And I am dismayed. And the pages of His Word wrinkle under the heat from my hands as I hold them close against my skin for hours, unmoving.

When Holmes isn’t at Vespers, or supper, or Compline, Father Ryland shoots me an odd look across the chapel where I stand crooked, leaning against a pew without my cane.

I glance down at my leg in answer, an apology written on my face, mixed with shame.

And he nods, then shoots me that look that I hate. _“I shouldn’t have asked you, because you were in the War. Of course you can’t make it up the stairs, Father Watson. Of course you can’t do that. You were in the War, after all.”_

For the first time in nine years, I am grateful for that look.

 

\--

 

The ground is covered in thick grey water, and the bottom of my cassock is stained red with blood. I run through black hallways, feet splashing against stone, and the candlelight casts silhouettes of smoking guns across the walls. Up over the vaulted ceilings. Hissing in the rafters.

I run. The groaning chorus sings beneath my feet, billowing up from Hell like a scream. Choking smoke filling up my lungs. My eyes.

He is there, just around each corner before me. I know it. I see his cloak billowing around each turn, and I chase it, and just when I round that corner, he is gone.

I run. Silhouettes topped with curls against the stained red walls, and I am always ten steps behind. Twenty steps behind. Thirty.

 _“Wait!”_ I cry out. _“I’m coming! Wait for me!”_

Footsteps echoing ahead of me in the water, splashing around corners just before I can reach him. Dark moans howling around me and rattling in my ears. I burst into a large courtyard lit by the moon, and I see the door to His church slamming shut in front of me. Slamming over a glimpse of a tall, lean form.

I sprint towards it. Fling open the door and rush inside. Bright white light blinds me, and I fall to my knees, covering my aching face with my forearms and hands.

Her voice calls out to me, cutting softly through the chaos.

 _“Let us go to the vineyards to see if the vines have budded,_ ” she whispers in her sweet, sweet voice. 

I open my eyes against the glare, and I gasp at what I see. The Blessed Virgin shining on her pure white throne, holding Christ draped across her lap. The Madonna. 

I take one step closer, and the blood is gone from my cassock. “ _Holy Mary, Mother of God,_ ” I gasp under my breath. 

She holds out her hand to me, the other hand caressing Christ. _“Let us go to the vineyards to see if the vines have budded,_ ” she croons to me again.

Another step closer. I reach for her hand. Christ is limp and dying and draped over her lap, his full form melting across her frail white bones. His long neck bared and shining in the light.

 _“Let us go to the vineyards,_ ” the Blessed Virgin sings.

A thousand doves shatter through the clouds like a bomb blast, pure and white and fluttering towards the sky. It shakes the foundations of the earth beneath my feet, and the alleluia chorus swells up in song louder than I’ve ever heard before. It surrounds me.

The pure white cloth covering Christ slips to the floor, revealing his full, bare skin.

It is Holmes.

I go to pray, “ _Mother of God_ ,” but instead my mouth cries, “ _Holmes_!”

I drop to my knees before him. He is radiant in the sun. Salty tears flowing down his cold, marble cheeks.

 _“If their blossoms have opened, and if the pomegranates are in bloom_ ,” the Virgin sings sweetly, “ _there I will give you my love_.”

Holmes is draped across her lap, head of curls thrown back, long neck bared under the light from the doves.

 _“There I will give you my love,_ ” I hear myself say.

I reach for him, my fingertips brushing against his. His hand falls limp towards the wet marble floor. Slow drops of sweat flow down his bare chest, glistening under the light from the heavens as he breathes.

I touch him.

 _“If their blossoms have opened, and if the pomegranates are in bloom_ ,” she is singing.

He moans, and I look down at his radiant, naked body. His member is flushed and full between his thighs. It is thick and bobbing against his flat stomach. Lush, curly hair and purple veins and white nectar leaking from the tip.

 _“There I will give you my love,_ ” Mary, Mother of Christ, sings.

“ _Holmes_ ,” I whisper. He is no longer crying. He is looking at me with a soft smile on his face.

“ _Holmes_ ,” I say again. I lean down towards his groin. Press my wet cheek against the warmth of his thigh. Feel the hairs on his leg brush against my face. Inhale the scent of him like sweet milk and honey.

“ _Kyrie eleison_ ,” the entire earth sings. I can hear the doves’ wings flutter in unison from above.

I gently place my lips around his leaking tip. Heavy warm weight on my tongue like red wine. Like the blood of Christ.

I taste him.

I swallow him whole down my throat. I lick him. Lips wet and stretched around hot skin, and he presses up into my mouth. Shaking.

“ _There I will give you my love_ ,” whispers the Mother of God.

I grip his warm hips with my hands as I suck him. As I bury my nose in his thick, dark hair, and stretch my mouth around him, and suckle on his taste. And suck, and taste, and linger, and sip. And moan at the weight of him pressed against my tongue. Leaking down my throat. Throbbing between my lips.

His long, pale fingers in my hair. Gentle.

I taste him in a rhythm. “ _Kyrie, kyrie, kyrie, kyrie. . ._ ”

His long, pale fingers pulling fists against my scalp.

The entire earth explodes. “ _Kyrie eleison!_ ”

Warm wine running down my throat, and I taste him, and he groans with his long, pale fingers on my face, and the Glory of the Lord is flowing through his skin, and my soul sings, “ _Allelujah! Allelujah Christ!_ ” as I kiss along the length of his softening, warm skin, and the Blessed Virgin sweetly cries, “ _There I will give you my –_ ”

My eyes fly open, and I leap up in bed. I’m shaking, and my heart thumps painfully in my chest. I hear a whimper escape from my own throat. My skin drips with sweat.

There’s a foreign sensation down between my legs, and when I reach down, I realize that my nightshirt is stained wet. Sticky residue plastered around the inside of my thighs, and nestled in the hair above my flesh which is soft and pulsing.

I have spent myself in my sleep.

I fling myself from my bed and rip the disgusting nightshirt from my body. Adrenaline courses through my veins like hot flames. In a blinding white panic, I throw on my cassock, leaving behind my collar and my cloak and my shoes.

I run. My leg screams as I flee from my chambers, out into the freezing night air choked with mist. I fly through the empty corridors, and across vast courtyards, stirring up swirls of dead leaves in my wake. I run across the grounds, sprinting away from the stone walls, and I fear that a bolt of lightning will strike me down from the sky. That His hand will reach down and simply pluck me from the earth. Throw me down into the fire, or hurl me into the sea.

I run. Out into the moors and stumbling across the grass. My lungs ache. I keep going by the hazy light of the moon until I reach the cliffs standing watch out over the sea, my body trembling. I halt at the edge, and brace myself against the harsh salt breeze billowing at my cassock under the stars. It rips across my body, blasting the heat from my face with its icy fingers. Gripping and pulling at my bare feet and hands.

“Please!” I cry out over the roaring sea. The wind howls. “Please, do not forsake me!”

I hear no answer. Pain in my chest.

“Please God, do not desert me!”

The icy spray blasts against my face and chills my bones. I think that perhaps I will die on this cliff. That my sin, this hidden black secret I thought I had kept locked away, will finally overtake me until I tumble down into the sea.

“You Called me,” I groan out into the wind. “Lord, I followed you!”

The wind calms for just a moment, giving an odd hum of peace. Standing there, in the belly of the black sky, hovering just above the raging sea, I allow myself, for the first time since I was sixteen years old, to remember.

How, hidden behind the thick trunk of an elm, on the morning I was set to leave our farm for the seminary, I had held Gregory’s warm hand tightly in mine.

“Don’t go, John,” he begged me. “You can still change your mind. Don’t go.”

How I’d clenched his hand painfully. “But I have to. He’s Called me.”

Gregory had looked so stricken then, in the shade of the green boughs. “But what about me? I’m calling you, too. You could still be a deacon. You could love us both.”

How I’d pulled my hand from his grasp, chest aching. “No,” I’d whispered. “No, Gregory, I could not.”

How he’d shed one tear, and not reached up to wipe it away. “Don’t do this, John,” he said. “Don’t say we can’t have this.”

And how I’d taken one step away from him, and shouldered my small cloth bag. “But Gregory,” I said to him softly, “we _can’t_ have this.”

I see his face so clearly now, and I’m shocked at the detail. At how his deep brown eyes suddenly materialize before me in the black and foggy mist, even after all this time.

“Christ,” I whisper, and then I can’t say anything more.

There’s a rustle behind me, and I jump around in surprise. My eyes try to focus on the figure in the dark, and when I recognize thick curls blowing in the wind, I nearly turn and leap off the deadly cliff before me.

Holmes is running towards me through the long grass, holding a bundle in his arms. The moonlight illuminates his eyes like fireflies, floating eerily above the thick fog as he moves. Unbidden, my chest moans _beautiful_ as he runs, long legs eating up the ground with his strides, and his cassock billows out behind him in the breeze like a cloud. Wild curls whipped through by wind.

He reaches me, and his hand flings out to grasp my arm. Before I can understand what is happening, he yanks me back with a huge force of strength, causing me to cry out and stumble back in his grip. I steady myself on my feet, but his hand still holds me, and the terror in his eyes suddenly clears my fogged thoughts.

“No, no,” I shake my head, and place my hand on his. My throat aches. “No, I wasn’t going to jump.”

Tension rushes out of his shoulders, but he still holds on to my arm. His eyes pierce through me, and once again I’m arrested. I realize in the back of my mind that my skin doesn’t burn when he touches me this time, and that I haven’t yet broken out into a cold sweat down my neck.

We look at each other silently in the light of the stars, both of our chests heaving with our breaths. I watch a soft curl blow across his forehead and into his eyes. He doesn’t reach up to move it away.

And then, like a slap in the face, I remember my dream.

This young man before me, who sprinted from his chambers and pulled me back from the cliff. . . Not even an hour ago I had lain there and dreamt I defiled him. Used his body for the ultimate sin. Sullied him, covered myself in sinful release, tasted his skin. . .

I blink out of my frantic thoughts when he gently shakes my arm, and then he’s stepping back to hand me a thick cloak in his hands – the bundle he’d been carrying when he ran across the moors. I stand there frozen as he steps closer to drape it about my shoulders. The scent of it instantly overwhelms my lungs in the icy air. It smells of another person's hair, another's body. . .

Of his skin. . .

Just when our chests are nearly close enough to touch, just when my body sizzles at the he steps back, and reaches down again into the grass. My heart spasms painfully when I realize what he is now holding, when he hands me my cane. I’d left it in his hallway. Left if after I’d gazed at him in private prayer through his door….

My shame overwhelms me. He is young, and beautiful, and sprinted out to me by the howling sea. Sprinted because he saw me tormented, and weak, and barely able to stand, with my bare, limping feet clinging to the edges of the earth, crying out with no one around to answer me.

And I see, as he wraps my frozen fingers around the stick of wood, that it is the most terrible thing, the most horrifying thing, that Holmes almost stood close enough for his chest to touch my own. That he has to see my bare feet.

And as the wicked weight of everything barrels down upon me, I feel my face crumble, and I start to weep. It runs over inside of me, filling my soul with weariness. I press both my hands to my face to try and hide, and my body shakes with the force of the embarrassingly wet sounds ripping from my chest.

I cannot stop.

I weep like a child, broken and small. It pierces through my bones, and burns in my blood, and stings my eyes sharper than the icy, salt wind. I can still feel the heat of him where he stands just before me, witness to the ugliest sight on all the earth, to the darkest horror.

But then I notice a new sound, quiet and delicate and mixed with the waves, audible over my own choked sobs.

It is the barest of whispers, just soft puffs of air. I wipe my face, and I force myself to open my eyes. When they focus, an ache rips through me when I realize he’s praying.

I gaze at his lips silently moving, with his eyes gently closed. I watch as the calm rise and fall of his chest gradually settles my own. And then, for the first time since the throes of my wicked dream, I hear a voice so sweet I start to weep anew at the sound.

“ _Fear not_ ,” the Virgin whispers softly over the waves. “ _Fear not, and neither be dismayed._ ”

Holmes stands with me there for a long, long time. My bare feet freeze in the long, wet grass, and my body still shivers, even beneath the thick cloak. I weep for Gregory’s single tear behind the elm. And I weep for the soldiers who died under my hands. And I weep for the loneliness I’ve never admitted to myself until this moment that I feel. I weep for the wretchedness of my hidden sin. For the release on my thighs.

I weep for gratitude that He somehow, against all higher knowledge and reason, still loves me.

_But God commandeth His own love for us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. . ._

Finally, I wipe my face on my sleeve and dare myself to look up. Holmes continues praying for a few more moments, and then he crosses himself, and he gives me a look that is completely devoid of pity. I feel warm.

The moment threatens to turn uncomfortable, like a weak flickering flame, but against all odds, I feel His hands surround us against the wind. The flame does not snuff out.

I sniff hard and cross my arms tightly over my chest. “How did you know I was out here?” I ask him quietly. My voice is rough and hoarse.

He looks at me for another long moment, then glances over his shoulder back towards the monastic walls in the foggy distance. I follow his gaze and see it – candlelight flickering high up in his tower room. 

I nod my head in understanding. “I never sleep either,” I say. It’s the first time I’ve ever told anyone that in my life.

And I try very hard, standing before him under the stars, to remind myself that I am supposed to be his spiritual leader. That I am his teacher, his superior, his priest.

But all I can feel is his warm skin in the air, and nothing about him feels lesser than me. Everything between us feels balanced in a way that reminds me, blasphemously, of our Holy Trinity. Even and equal and stable.

Fixed.

I follow him like a lamb when he eventually starts to walk back towards the stone walls, slowly, so that I can keep up with my leg. It aches now, more than it ever has in years. But I do not fear falling down into the wet grass. Somehow, deep down, I know that human arms would catch me.

By the time we make our way back to the seminary grounds, I’m shivering and wet in my clothes. So is he. My bare feet slap softly against the cold stone as we wind through the familiar corridors of the place I call home. He leads me, even though he’s barely just arrived.

He walks me all the way to my chamber door, both of us tiptoeing past sleepy rooms. We stand there, nearly chest to chest once more in the narrow hallway, and his breath sounds deafening in the silence. He is impossibly warm.

My throat feels tight. “Thank you,” I whisper.

He looks at me deeply in that way he seems to do, then nods.

Mild panic, fluttering deep in my gut. “Please don’t . . .I’m so sorry. Forgive me, for earlier.” I swallow hard. “Please, if you could not say anything . . . about tonight–”

He cuts me off with an immediate shake of the head. As if all is settled. 

I feel his breath puffing softly against my face. He has not moved away, and neither have I. Like dust swirling in the air, words float into my chest.

_“You have saved me.”_

And, for the first time in my life, I feel as if I’m speaking those words to two people at once.

His fingertips brush against my own for one breathless moment, trembling across my skin in the dark, and then he’s stepping back, nodding once and turning down the corridor, disappearing into the dark like a silent cloud of smoke.

The moment the last of his footsteps fade away into silence, I fling myself back inside my chamber and lean against the closed door. My heart pounds. I’d felt, in that moment when our fingers brushed, something powerful. The desire to reach out and take hold of his hand. . . and not to drape it across my lips, or press it inside my mouth.

No. . .

I’d wanted to take his hand and simply hold it in mine, the same way I’d held His Words in my hands and clutched them to my breast just earlier today.

An unease thrums deeply in my chest. Old words flash through my mind. _For the wages of sin is death. . . men with men working that which is unseemly. . ._

But her voice, the Mother of God’s sweet voice interrupts: “ _Fear not, and neither be dismayed.”_

I lie down with a sigh, and I sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Verses used, in no particular order:  
> Romans 1:27: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly. . .  
> Romans 5:8 But God commandeth his own love for us . . .  
> Deuteronomy 31:8: And the LORD, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed.  
> John 20:22-23: And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.  
> Genesis 19:15-26: the story of Sodom and Gomorrah's destruction, and the fate of Lot's wife, who looked back on her city being destroyed, and was therefore turned into a pillar of salt by God.  
> Song of Solomon 7:12: Let us go early to the vineyards to see if the vines have budded, if the blossoms have opened, and if the pomegranates are in bloom - there I will give you my love. 
> 
> If you know me at all, you know that I couldn't resist throwing in some Johnstrade. Don't worry, we'll learn more about their storyline! And I promise we'll learn more about Sherlock too.
> 
> "The Madonna" refers to any depiction of Mary with Jesus. Oftentimes, Jesus is a baby in these paintings and sculptures. But you've probably also seen depictions of Mary holding an adult Jesus across her lap after his death. Because I'm terrible with technology, the picture I want to link just won't cooperate :(
> 
> "Ite, missa est" means, literally, "go, she has been sent." In this case, 'she' means the Church. It was said during the Concluding Rites of a Mass by the priest in order to end the liturgy and send those assembled off to share the Eucharist with the world.
> 
> If you're missing the celtic music, give Julie Fowlis a listen! [This song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZEhc3j2t8I) is a little lighthearted for this chapter, but I listened to it pretty much nonstop while writing this. It's called "Dh’èirich mi moch madainn cheòthar (I arose early on a misty morning)." I think it still gives a good sense of atmosphere for the seminary at the edges of the cliffs. All of her stuff is gold, and one of her songs will come in to play in a *big way* later on :)
> 
> Thank you for reading! I know I'm terribly behind on comments, but please know that I adore every one, and I'm so grateful for them. I love squeeing about priestlock with everyone! I promise the angst will end eventually!


	4. Who Is This That Appears Like the Dawn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want some music to go along with this chapter, especially the final scene, give the [Miserere](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lC7V8hG198) a listen, by Gregorio Allegri. I think you'll agree with me that it embodies John's desperate longing, and it's one of my favorite religious pieces of music.
> 
> If you want some Celtic music as a nice backdrop, here's the classic [Siúil a Rún (Walk my Love)](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIFI8DVyP4Y), the Celtic Woman version.

_20th September 1927_

 

There have been times, moments as fleeting as a puff of breath in cold air, where I’ve thought that maybe I have it all wrong. 

This thought brushed across my face and whispered behind my ear when I held my mother’s hand and watched her close her eyes one final time, shivering as her final words - _is tú mo ghrá_ \- cascaded down my spine.

It hovered at the back of my throat, prickling in my eyes, when I left Gregory standing in the shade from the green boughs, leaning against the trunk for support and clutching his faded cap in his hands.

It thrummed and sparked in the joints of my fingers when I crawled on my belly across the banks of the Somme, holding soldiers’ spilled innards in my hands and crying out to a voice I knew would not audibly answer over the noise.

It ached, pierced sharply in the center of my breast, when I placed Holmes' folded cloak, the one he had draped about my shoulders, on the back of his chair before my lecture. When I casually explained to Brother Hales' confused glance that Holmes had left it behind the night before at Compline. And yes, he really should be more careful with his things. I'll remind him, of course.

And now, as I go about my chosen life here in these thick walls, that same sharp, black thought drips slowly at the nape of my neck like cold oil. 

It haunts me.

I press my cheek to the cold stone of my chamber floors like I do every morning, breathing the icy air into my lungs and shivering under the black wool of my cloak. 

My cloak that only smells of my own hair and skin. Of just me.

“Oh God,” I whisper. “Thou art my God. I watch for thee from the dawn, and early I will seek thee.”

My voice echoes loudly in the small confines of my room. It booms against the stone walls, presses up against the low ceiling, seeps like spilled wine out under the crack in the door.

“My soul thirsts for Thee, my body longs for Thee as in a dry and thirsty land,” I mumble into the silence of the earth. 

The oil at the back of my neck drips down my skin. One big, fat drop that stills me in my path. My lips keep speaking my prayer, “I came to Thy sanctuary. . .”

But my heart is pounding and cold – dead weight in the center of my chest.

“My soul thirsts for Thee.”

Holmes’ eyes in the stormy dark --

“My body longs for Thee.”

Holmes’ fingertips brushing against mine --

“I come to Thy sanctuary.”

Holmes’ cassock sleeve rustling against my own during Lauds --

I shake my head and push out all the stale air from my lungs, bowing myself deeper towards the floor before Him. I wonder how He feels towards me on mornings such as this – when my lips say words directed to His ears, but my wicked mind betrays me with thoughts of pale fingers. . . a long, silent throat. . . strong thighs sprinting through wet grass towards the cliff. . .

I wonder if He pities me, looking down from the Heavens on the lonely, ageing man who will never feel another human’s touch on his own thighs again, even if he didn't have the strip of white about his neck. Who limps through corridors, and reads from yellowed handwritten notes, and sings memorized verses, and sleeps on a cot that will only ever fit one body beneath its sheets.

Who whispers prayers that once filled me with radiance, but now sound brittle and hollow. Flat.

I wonder if He hates me, seething with righteous rage when my hidden skin shivers each time Holmes looks up at me. Each time he nods quiet understanding by my side while I teach. If He clenches His mighty fists and breathes out fire when I hasten with my cane down a candlelit hallway to catch up to a flowing black robe just ahead of me, wanting to walk for just a moment by someone else’s warm side. If He gnashes His teeth and steals away my oxygen when I allow my hand to linger whenever Holmes passes me his essays, or a candle, or my cane.

And I wonder if He watches us closely enough to see that Holmes lets my hand linger in his. That he, too, shivers when bare skin touches skin.

We have not spoken since that fateful night on the cliff. Have not even silently acknowledged it with a knowing glance, or caught each other looking out to the horizon line, remembering that we once stood there in the darkness, shoulder to shoulder. That he sprinted to the edge of the earth to save me; he walked me slowly back to my rooms in the dark. And I, a coward even worse than Jonah, have not so much as met his gaze since.

_But Jonah rose up to flee from the presence of the Lord. . . So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging. . ._

I lick my chapped lips and roll my neck on my shoulders, wincing at the tired muscles in my back.

“Because Thy loving kindness is better than life,” I whisper towards the black ceiling, “my lips shall praise Thee.”

Cold oil along my spine. Holmes’ curls in the wind.

“Thus I will bless Thee while I live.” My heart burns in my chest. “I will lift up my hands in Thy Name.”

I feel exhausted. I want to curl up in a tight ball and lie down on the hard floor to rest for hours. My limbs are like lead, and my stomach is tight. For one breathless moment, I allow myself the wicked luxury of pretending that I can crawl back into my bed. That I can cease my endless prayers, and let my throat be silent, and sleep and sleep and sleep until dusk. That I can sleep through my teaching, and Mass, and afternoon tea. Sleep through the long corridors and silent meals and chanting voices. Sleep through the torment of blue eyes, and pale cheeks. The memory of the scent of his cloak.

It would be indulgent in the extreme. It would be utterly, sinfully exquisite. It would be rest. . .

“ _My child_ ,” I suddenly hear. My breast bursts with warmth at the sound of the voice, and I leap to my feet without needing my cane. 

“Yes?” I barely whisper under my breath. My whole body is on alert – skin alive and prickling.

“ _My child_ ,” I hear again. Then, softer, “ _John_.”

The dry land has come. I am no longer like Jonah floating aimlessly in the sea, waiting for the giant fish.

I swallow over a dry throat and press my hands to the stone walls, trembling, as if I was touching the altar itself. “I am here,” I say, louder. “Speak to me. I am here.”

It shocks me how desperate I am for that voice to keep speaking. Mere moments ago I was weary and longing for sleep – for utter peace and quiet and rest without sound.

And now I stand madly pressing my fingers to the stone, trying to feel the beat of His veins through the walls where it rests, hidden, after hundreds of years of Holy Communion.

_And He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood . . . Drink – the blood of Christ. . ._

“ _John_ ,” He says, except it is not He. It is she. “ _John, peace I leave you. My peace I give unto you_.”

It startles me to hear her say those words – words which were written down and preserved for Christ alone. My heart races. “Lord –”

“ _Let not your heart be troubled. Neither let it be afraid_.”

I want to protest, to clutch harshly at my breast and ask _why_.

Why He hasn’t spoken to me since Holmes pulled me back from the cliff. Why she has taken His place, and why she gently calls me John. Why she speaks the words that Christ Himself spoke, word for word.

Why she tells me, over and over again as I stumble through my darkest days, “ _fear not_.”

The bell for Lauds tolls its mournful cry, ripping me from my thoughts and humming in my ears. In despair, I pull on my outer cloak with shaking hands, then flip up the hood against the cold air of the courtyards. With my fingers on my door, I try one last time.

“Oh God, Thou art my God,” I moan under my breath. “I watch for Thee from the dawn.”

I wait. For endless, eternal seconds, while my Brothers gather just beyond my door out in the corridors, I wait.

When He doesn’t respond, I want to sink to my knees and scream out in loss. I want to grip at the hem of His robes, and beg Him to erase Holmes from my thoughts, and groan out, as Christ did, “ _Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani_?”

But instead, as I enter the silent, dark hallway, it is her voice I finally hear in answer. Hesitant and soft, like a lark among the rafters, as if it is her voice itself which holds up the ancient bricks and stone: “ _Peace I leave you. My peace I give unto you._ ”

And I hear myself whisper, just before I reach the chapel doors, not “ _lama sabachthani,_ ” but, “Hail Mary, Mother of God.”

 

\--

 

“A word, Father Watson?”

I halt mid-step and turn back towards Father Colmas, still shuffling his papers from the end of Mass. I forbid myself to look back over my shoulder and watch the rest of my Brothers make their silent way from their pews. Forbid myself to search for one head among the group - the back of one neck. . .

Instead, I wait with folded hands for Father Colmas to be ready. He sweeps past me without another word, and I follow him silently, winding our way through the brilliant sunlit patches and up the grand staircase to where his office lies.

He stands motionless after he reaches the top step, as if he’s studying the walls, but I know that he is waiting for me to haul myself up the stairs. I know that look – that look I hate – will be waiting for me when I reach the top.

Holmes hadn’t given me that look when we walked back across the moors in the dark.

Father Colmas gives me the look – _So sorry, Father Watson, I really should have slowed down. So sorry to make you have to rush to keep up. Of course you can’t_ – and I hold up a gentle hand to soothe him, then look down at my cane.

We enter his bright office, filled with the scent of wood and books. He slips the stole from Mass off his shoulders and lifts the cap from his thinning hair, then gestures for me to have a seat in a great mahogany chair – probably older than St. Sebastian’s itself.

“Father?” I prompt once we’re seated.

Father Colmas smiles softly with his fingers steepled in front of his nose. “Come now, Watson,” he says grinning, “We’ve been colleagues too long for you to be as formal as that.”

I clear my throat over embarrassment. Almost fifteen years as a man of the cloth and I still fail at little formalities such as this, at the rules of it all.

“Of course,” I say. I try, but my mouth refuses to say the plain word “Colmas” – as if lightning would strike me down if I did.

He knows this, sitting still and watching my silent struggle. He grins again with smart eyes.

“And how are you finding your new ordinands?” he asks.

I shift in the heavy chair and smooth the front of my cassock, buying time to think of what to say. The ordinands of this year and every year past all flow together into one vague clump in my mind. Save for one pair of pale eyes . . . one head of curls . . .

“They’re quite studious,” I hear myself say. “Brother Hales has wonderful knowledge of the early priesthood stemming from the Disciples. He and Thomas have discussed at length during our seminar the similarities and differences of our priesthood and the ancient Hebraic priesthood. And then there’s Brother Kiernan, whose interest in the history of the Rite of Ordination has him well on his way to a higher education degree, and Harrows brings some lovely points from the biography of Pope Leo XIII, whom his mother was quite devoted to --”

I realize I’ve been rambling, staring blankly at the wall, and I feel myself blush as I cut myself short. “As I’ve said, they’re quite a studious group this year,” I finish lamely.

Father Colmas looks at me with an unreadable expression, then rises and turns towards the cracked open window, gazing out over the moors in the sun. “I agree with you, Watson,” he says low, not looking at me. His hands are gently held behind his wide back. “We have many things to be grateful for to our Lord as regards our ordinands this year.”

I sense a silent “ _but_ ” hovering just out of reach of his lips, and I surreptitiously try to wipe my clammy palms on the cloth of my robes. The air feels stifling, even in the weak winter sun.

“Praise be to Christ,” I say, to fill the silence.

He hums softly under his breath, then echoes me in a low murmur, “Yes, praise be to Christ.”

We sit in silence, and I fear the sound of my heart beating will echo along the ancient stone walls and wood beams, loudly enough for him to hear. I’m not even sure why my heart is racing like it is. Why it clamors in my chest or vibrates within my ribs. We have never sat like this – he and I. Not really. Father Jacobs takes tea up here, of course. And Fathers Ryland and Woodley often join Father Colmas for a casual reading after Vespers. 

But they . . . they are the other priests. The priests who can kneel during the Eucharist without fear that they won’t be physically able to get up again from the hard stone floor once their wine has been drunk. The priests who have rooms all next to each other in one hallway, without fear that their screaming will awake their neighbor before dawn. The priests who, even nearing their eighties, can still jog up the stairs, and go for summer swims in the sea, and have life histories in churches across England and the world which they can chat about that don’t involve blood. Stained red innards covering their fingers. Memories of the weight of a dead soldier’s hand in their palm.

Priests who don’t hear the Virgin Mary call them by name.

Priests who haven’t dreamt of an ordinand’s cock.

Minutes pass, with nothing but the sound of the blood in my veins. Father Colmas still gazes out the window, fingering his rosary in his hands behind his back. And then, like a bullet piercing the silence, he finally speaks.

“And what,” he says out towards the brilliant window, “do you think of Holmes?”

I freeze. Every drop of blood leaves my body in a rush, and my heart sits like a dead stone in my chest.

I can’t breathe.

Father Colmas turns towards me, waiting for me to speak. His eyes are unreadable, his face simply blank. 

_If their blossoms have opened, and if the pomegranates are in bloom, there I will give you my love. . there I will give you my --_

“Holmes?” I somehow say. The words feel like I’m screaming, ripping them from my cold chest like a bomb of fire.

He turns back towards the window, hands still gently behind his back. “Yes, Holmes,” he says softly, as if he hasn’t just gutted me and left me dead in the middle of his office. As if he isn’t speaking to a corpse.

_Let us go to the vineyards to see if the vines have budded. . . Let us go to the vineyards. . ._

_For the wages of sin is death._

“He’s extremely intelligent,” I manage to force out. “His essays have been. . . quite astounding in my seminar, at least.”

There’s a question in my voice. One that begs Father Colmas to confirm that Holmes’ coursework is what he’s concerned about. That he isn’t really asking me what I think of Holmes’ fingers during Lauds, or the way the sweat dripped down his bare back in his chambers, or the way his eyes had blazed in the moonlight when he held me back from the cliff. . .

Father Colmas chuckles softly. “Of his intelligence, I have absolutely no doubt. Perhaps the finest student we’ve had here at St. Sebastian’s in years, if my memory recalls.”

My heart is a thick, wet drum in my chest. I have nothing to say to this. No way to make my numb lips move. Father Colmas looks back at me for one moment, and I nearly gasp out loud when I recognize the look on his face.

It’s the same look he gave me at the top of the stairs. It’s _that_ look, emblazoned across his face.

It’s pity.

He gazes out the window again, and his jaw is tight. “I worry about him,” he says quietly.

I hold my breath, terrified I’ll breathe too loud and miss something he says. I want to ask “ _why is that?_ ” but I know my voice would be like brittle glass. I wait.

“May I be frank with you, Watson? And you will return the favor?” Father Colmas suddenly sits back at his desk, hands folded.

My dog collar presses against my windpipe, choking me like it did for those first few weeks I ever wore it, before I was used to its comforting presence against my skin. I nod and smooth the front of my robes, fingers trailing over black buttons. “Of course.”

He looks down at his hands, lips silently moving, and when he gazes up at me I feel he’s been gathering resolve.

“Holmes’ Vow,” he says simply.

I lick my lips. “Yes. . .?”

“Has he indicated to you, or intimated at all why he made it?”

I sit stunned. It’s the last thing I ever expected Father Colmas to ask. I say the obvious answer, and immediately feel like a fool. “Well, he can’t exactly speak about it –”

“Yes, obviously. But in his writings, or his essays?” Father Colmas flexes his hands. “Or anything he ever mentions in his prayers?”

I gasp. It shocks me that he would ask such a thing. . . something as private as prayer, as sacred –

“No, no, forgive me,” he cuts in before I can respond. “I should not ask such things. I cannot.”

He leans on the desk and drops his face into his hands, and it strikes me that, even after so many years, I’ve never seen Father Colmas look so frail. So weighted down.

I nod a quiet forgiveness when he looks back up, not that I can even grant such a thing. “Holmes does not even speak aloud his prayers,” I say, forbidding myself to remember a bare back, glistening with sweat. “And his papers are solely on the subject – on Church history.”

Father Colmas nods tiredly, as if he was expecting me to say such things verbatim. He reaches for the pitcher of water on his desk and pours us both a glass before taking a small sip.

“It’s some of the other ordinands,” he finally says. “There’s been some. . . rumblings. Some inequality among the group.” He pauses, but I don’t say anything. “Surely you’ve seen what I mean? With Holmes?”

A sudden urge strikes me like a burst of wind to the face. I want to leap up from this chair, and sprint up the winding staircase, and arrive at the doorway of Holmes’ tower room. I want to run to him, and kneel at his feet, and hold his fingers in my hands. Whisper, “ _You are not alone. I watch for you. I see you._ ”

Instead I stay seated, with a clench in my gut. In my mind I see exactly what I know Father Colmas is referring to. Holmes sitting all alone in the corner at mealtimes. Holmes watching from the shadows while the other ordinands laugh amongst themselves during their recreation hour. Holmes’ room – alone in the tower. Him left behind in vast and empty stone spaces while the rest of the ordinands walk down to the sea, or visit the nearby town, or travel to St. Ignatius to attend Mass or receive Penance.

Holmes watching me from his window. . . running down to pull me back from the sea. . . from the darkness –

Placing a small aspirin in my hand, touching my skin.

I blink hard and remember that I’m not alone in my room with my thoughts. “Yes,” I say, a bit too late. “Yes, I know what you mean.”

Father Colmas nods, then takes a deep breath into his lungs. He seems like he is on the verge of a vast canyon, preparing himself to step off the solid ground into the air.

I hold my breath.

“Watson, you . . . well, I find myself in a position where I’m . . . finding similarities,” Father Colmas stutters out. “Between yourself and Brother Holmes.”

Fire in my veins. Ice down my throat. “Similarities?” I ask. I know my voice is shaking.

“Well,” Father Colmas shrugs his shoulders, twisting his hands. “Obviously part of it is your age. You being the youngest priest here.”

“But Father Ryland is younger than me,” I cut in.

Father Colmas hums and cocks his head. “In numbers, maybe. But not so much in spirit.” He coughs with a fist over his mouth. I know his main point is coming, and I brace myself for it. Hunkering down at the base of the trenches with a hot chunk of metal in my hands.

“I said I would be frank, Watson, and so I will be frank. You are, perhaps, the only priest here who understands isolation such as Holmes is currently subjected to. I believe you understand what I mean. I have tried, in whatever way possible, to ascertain the reasoning for Holmes’ rather unusual Vow. To see if there is some other form of Penance I could provide, or some other path to spiritual healing. But he persists, and it is exactly that cloud of religious fervor which hangs about him that I believe is making the other ordinands rather. . . uncomfortable. They feel inferior to him. Unsure how to act in his surroundings. And so. . .” Father Colmas spreads his hands, as if at a feast: “Isolation. Holmes may join us five times a day in prayer, but, aside from Christ, it appears he is utterly alone. Even his paperwork, you know, from his admission to the seminary – no one else is named. No family mentioned, and he arrived with nothing. No clothing of his own besides what was on his back. And his shoes were so worn away. . .” Father Colmas shudders. “They reminded me of the shoes I saw in the workhouse, decades ago.”

This information grips at my throat and cuts off my air. It doesn’t make any sense. Holmes should be draped in fine silk, like the Christ draped across the lap of the Madonna. . .

“This information troubles you, I see.”

I nod, caught out, and heat flushes up my cheeks. Father Colmas runs a hand through his thinning, grey hair. “The priesthood has always been a calling for the destitute, as you well know, Watson. One can receive a roof over their head, and clothing on their back, and three square meals a day. And one can receive the assurance that this life is only temporary. That they are not bound to poverty forever.”

“So you believe Holmes to have been poor?”

Father Colmas nods. His eyes are troubled. “I have seen ordinands like him year after year. They all arrive on our doorstep looking the same way – a bit lost. Like the earth just chewed them up and spit them out down the road.” 

I nod. “Brother Carrows was a bit that way, Father,” I say. “From five or six years ago.”

Father Colmas runs a tired hand over his brow, shaking his head at himself. “I’m ashamed to admit that, were it not for Holmes’ remarkable entrance papers, we might have looked past him to another student with more references. . . And were it only that, we would not now be having this discussion. The entire point of our priesthood is sacrificing possessions, everybody on an even plane before Christ, no matter what you arrived with. But his Vow. . . I fear he has made his life unnecessarily difficult. And who knows for how long – he will not hint at when it will conclude, when his Penance will have been achieved.”

I swallow hard over the sandpaper in my throat. Hot tears gather in the corners of my eyes. I blink them away. “You feel that I can be a friend to him,” I say softly. “Because of my . . . because of my experiences. The war.”

I know that nothing more detailed needs to be said. We both know how I also sit alone at mealtimes. We both know that I, too, sleep far, far away. That I watch from the shadows while everyone else laughs. It is only now, sitting face to face across his desk for the first time in nine years of knowing each other, that I suddenly understand how much Father Colmas has noticed. How much he has watched.

Father Colmas gives me a very solemn look. The moment stretches on, paper thin and trembling. Finally, he stands and waits for me to follow. “Will you at least pray about it, Watson?” he asks me.

I clasp his extended hand in mine, looking down at the way his blue veins contrast with my own skin. “I believe I have already been given an answer,” I whisper.

“ _Guide him, as I have guided you,_ ” I hear in my soul, only it is not Him saying it to me. It is just my memory of His voice. One I have not heard in weeks.

I don’t notice her until I’m back out in the hallway again, cane echoing across the cold, dry stone. I hear her as I’m fighting with myself not to turn and dash up the stairs of the tower. Not to find Holmes, and take his thin hand in mine, and say, “ _Let me be a friend to you. Let me . . . let me know you, just as He knows your name._ ”

She speaks to me as I’m limping down the worn, steep steps, trying to make my way to grab a bowl of soup in time before the afternoon of lessons.

She speaks to me, and her voice is so soft and velvet, I feel as if the stone around me has been turned into rich silk. As if her voice, and not Christ’s blood, is what runs through these walls’ veins. As if it is she whose hands are on my shoulders when I pray, and she who first called me to prostrate myself on the day of my Rite of Ordination before an altar glittering with gold. She who saved me when my hands were slick and red with blood. My prayers to her screamed over the bombs.

“ _Fear not,_ ” the Blessed Virgin whispers, “ _and neither be dismayed._ ”

 

-

 

_23rd September 1927_

Three days after my conversation with Father Colmas, I find myself restless and irritable after Lauds. I’ve always loved Lauds – the way our voices hum like the waves across the floors, and our words fly heavenwards with the slowly rising sun, and the heat of our bodies protects us from the icy dawn chill.

But today, my fingers itch to feel the grass beneath their touch. I try to sing, to focus on the warmth upon my cheeks. But the incense and lantern oil only fill my lungs with thick smoke, and I desire more than anything to breathe in a lungful of the sea. Need more than anything not to be closed in by stone.

I skip breakfast, like I so often do, and set out across the moors immediately once the chapel doors open for us to leave. My back feels exposed, as if their stares could physically harm me through the fabric of my clothes.

I don’t look back, but tighten my grip upon my cane. The bighting wind blows back my cloak from my frame, and the smell of grass brushes against my face with its chilled warmth. I think that, from above, I must look like a great raven. Just a black spot billowing across the vast, grey moors, with long open sleeves acting as wings in the wind.

It used to thrill me, when I was young. To see the long lines of priests in their inky black cassocks and robes, filing slowly with their heads bowed down the cramped town roads on Good Friday and Christmas Eve, when Mass was such a spectacle to behold – like a play. The other altar boys would gasp and fawn over the white robes of mass. The glittering gold threading, and the stoles of rich silks, and the jewels echoing the stained glass up in the windows.

But for me, it was always the black. The black with a flash of pure white at the throat.

I make my way down along one of the old paths, littered with stones and dried up leaves. The fall air is crisp and dry against my skin, whipping me with salt spray like ice across my scalp. I breathe in the rocks and the sea and the mud and I smile, as I haven’t smiled for weeks during Lauds. 

Holmes hadn’t stood next to me this morning, as he usually did. And, in my wickedness, that had only made it harder to breathe.

I walk with the sunrise, spilling soft light across the moors. I am the only person on earth. Just a black speck on an empty planet.

“Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power,” I say under my breath as I walk. Stray sparrows rise up out of the grasses beside me, flittering up towards the skies on their wings. “For Thou has created all things,” I whisper with a smile. “And for Thy pleasure they are and were created.”

And though I do not hear His voice, there is a peace upon my breast. Not His hands, but something, is warm upon my shoulders. I look out over the churning foam of the sea far below, then turn to gaze back at the brilliant stone fortress – what I know will now appear as only a tiny blot in the far distance. The place that I have longed to call my home. My home with Him.

Then I see him. Black robes billowing in the breeze, and wild curls whipping in the wind. Pale skin.

My mind is filled with words – verses and phrases. Father Colmas’ request, and the Holy Word of God, and the mutterings of my heart all muddled into one. 

But above all, two words in stark relief above the grey.

_Guide him._

I steel myself, and I roll back my shoulders. Loosen my grip on my cane.

He walks slowly. It gives me time to trace the lines of his shoulders against the sky. Fast, aching glimpses of his hips among the black folds. 

“Brother Holmes,” I say when he is close enough to hear. Already I can feel the heat of him pressing against my skin. The smell of old book pages clings to his robes. Hot oil and soft tea and water perfumed with roses.

He bows his head to me, rolling on his long neck.

Her hands are on my shoulders.

“Will you walk with me?” I ask.

Something in his eyes brightens, as if he hadn’t expected those words. It makes my heart stop to realize he had still expected to be left alone, even after walking such a long way just to reach me. Even here, where he is the only company around for me to choose, that he had still expected isolation in his walk along the cliffs.

He steps aside, and we start off together down the pathway, trodden down into the long grass by hundreds of years' of monastic feet. He automatically walks my same speed, without mistake. His sleeve brushes against mine, just the faintest rasping of cloaks. There is a crackling in the air – the same as when he’d first touched my skin in the empty courtyard. It runs along my spine and sits warmly on my tongue. It is nothing like the warm tingling I feel in His presence. Nothing like the way my skin burns when in the ecstasy of Mass, the joy of the Eucharist. 

No, this is different. Like the palm fronds laid down for Jesus Christ when he returned to Jerusalem; comforting and unassuming and there. Just _there_.

And after a few minutes of silence, with just the sounds of our breaths, I suddenly find myself breaking the soft stillness with my words.

“You know, the best meal I ever had in my life was in Paris. Just outside the city, actually, in this old nun’s parlor that had the roof blown off by a bomb the week before.”

I can’t believe what I’m saying. My own words stun me. Never before have I even uttered the word “Paris” out loud. Never spoken of my time there, or remembered the moments without blood staining my hands, or relived that one evening with the rich mussel stew. With the fresh baguette and hunk of cheese and cool, sharp wine. Without the piercing screams of bullets ripping their way through the silence.

And when Holmes doesn’t laugh at me, or look at me like I’m insane, I find myself pouring over with stories like a fountain. Like the barrels of wine that Christ refilled at his first wedding, or the jar of oil that replenished itself over and over each night. Words spilling off my lips and into the sea mist, swirling around our robes and hovering warmly against my chest. Words that cause Holmes to look at me like I’m the only thing that exists, and speak to me with his eyes, his gestures, his mouth. Let me know when he’s laughing, or questioning, or amazed. 

Let me know that he knows that no one else has ever heard these words.

I tell him of the French coastline at dawn - the way the seabirds had pierced the grey clouds with their wings, and the sound of cocking guns had clicked across the rolling hush of the waves. I tell him of the odd, terrible beauty of an abandoned town wafting in ruin and smoke, with the buildings in rubble across the wet ground, and a child's single shoe peeking out of the mud.

Tell him of the glory of a blessed hot meal after nine days on the march. The way the soldiers sang around the hand-rolled cigarettes in their mouths. The way some of them joked and called me Dad instead of Father.

And as I talk, I only hear the sound of my voice. There are no hymns in my head – none of Christ’s Words flashing through my mind like stark text. I am not silently begging for forgiveness, or pleading for mercy. Not afraid, or crying help, or feeling nausea in the pit of my gut. I do not hear Him speak to me, and I do not hear her sing. 

No, all I hear is my own memories making their virgin way into the sky. And I hear Holmes’ breathing. Soft sighs as he walks.

I talk, on and off, long stretches between my little phrases, until we’re back at the thick gates of St. Sebastian’s, and my lips have grown dry and chapped from the cold wind. I feel lighter than air, as if I could finally become that raven and fly. As if I could run back towards the cliffs, and this time leap off, and not need Holmes to pull me back. Because I would survive it.

He halts me at the stone walls with one look from his eyes. His pale cheeks are pink and ruddy from the wind, and his curls have frizzed above his head into a rich, brown halo. Salt spray is on his lips, and a flush up his neck, and as he swallows, his throat presses against the collar at his throat.

I barely stop myself in time from sighing at the beauty of it out loud, the same way the sight of her always squeezes an awestruck sound across my tongue. 

He places his hand on my sleeve, and my heart leaps into my throat. I am thrumming – everything reduced to his fingers on my forearm. Everything focused on what it would feel like without the layer of thick fabric in between his skin and mine.

He stays with me. Looks at me like I’ve never been seen before.

_And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul._

These verses – so familiar and safe in my mind, suddenly blaze to life with new meaning in my veins. 

“ _Lord, save me,_ ” I want to say. I want to run and receive Penance. The urge churns in my chest and tingles in the soles of my feet.

It feels utterly wrong, to stand here and let him touch my arm. To look into his face, and think back over my thoughts from the last weeks, and realize that he is my sin, and my downfall, and my blackness. That on his pale skin is tattooed the wickedness of my soul. In his curls are wound the aching, black coils from my past. The demons that have ravaged their way back into my life. Ones I thought had been buried in the red mud from the Somme.

But Holmes is calm. He looks at me, and sees nothing wrong in my gaze.

_The soul of Jonathan was knit . . . there I will give you my love --_

I’m trembling in the grip of his fingertips.

“Walk with me again,” I say, not even controlling my own voice.

Something flashes in his eyes – something that looks like relief. He nods. His fingers tighten around my arm. The bottom of his cassock brushes against mine.

And I . . . and I . . .

I lift my own hand to cover his where it rests. His fingers twitch beneath my palm. Skin smooth and gently cooled.

I touch him, and no voices scream out at me from Hell. No force snarls and flings me into the sea. Nobody takes aim and cocks their gun.

He touches me, and swallows hard, and then sways even closer to my body. Black robes rushing forward to brush against mine. Long neck dipping, glistening in the sun . . .His chest just inches, inches . . .

And then he’s gone. The outline of his shoulders disappearing into the stone.

I stand there frozen until the bell for our next prayers rings, with the ghosts of his hand still gripping my forearm, and the weight of the cross around my neck like lead.

 _”The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David,”_ she whispers to me.

I turn my face up towards the Heavens and respond, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners. And pray for me.”

 

-

 

_1 October 1927_

 

When I wake, the bombs are still echoing in my room. They roar against the stone, and shriek across my mattress. They cover my face and hair with invisible rubble and soot.

I’m panting, and I know that every inch of my skin is drenched with thick sweat. I press my shaking hands to my cold lips in the pitch dark, then breathe a prayer of thanks into my palms that I am alive. That the other priests sleep too far away to have heard me, and that the wetness on my hands is just tears and not blood.

That the last time I heard screaming outside of my dreams was eleven years ago.

Somehow, I manage to stumble to my feet, urging my numb and heavy limbs to hold me upright. It is the middle of the night, but still I pull on my cassock and fasten my collar about my throat. I slowly wash my face. I’ve learned that there is no point in trying to sleep on these nights – when each candle drips with blood, and the rough stones look like soldiers’ faces as the life faded from their eyes.

So I fully dress in the dark, and I don my hooded cloak, and I set out into the night, half-asleep on my tired feet. I walk down moonlit corridors, knowing each careful step by heart. And as I walk, and the leaves whistle, I murmur under my breath: “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God.”

I wish that He was saying these words to me, whispering them into my soul. That I could hear Him now the same way I heard Him down in the mud, in those precious final seconds before I let my stinging eyes slide shut.

But tonight, since He remains silent, I decide my own voice serves just as well; the beautiful low notes with which he gifted me in my mother's womb. I walk in time to the rhythm of these Blessed, sacred words, and let their cadence guide me to the quiet that I seek. “I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness,” I whisper.

The moon and the stars hear me, repeating His words back to myself in a silver echo. It is the same prayer I would have said all those years ago, if my lips weren’t busy giving last rites to the corpses beneath my hands. The wind whips through my hair and moans through the trees. Clawing its way over the endless moors and walls of stone, like a thousand ghosts rising up to sing in the fog.

I reach the door to the chapel and grasp it with a trembling hand, throwing the heavy wood open as if I need to convince it to let me enter. The still silence of the sanctum throws itself upon my skin, and I shut the door behind me with a heavy thud against the humming night.

It is dark inside, and utterly cold, and rows of empty pews sit in silent, mournful vigil. I find my way by heart, palms skidding over the worn wood, until I make my way up to the stone steps and the altar. I light a single candle, and the flame crackles freshly in the silence. Its light bathes the Virgin’s feet in little golden pools, flickering in the soft wind and hissing through the mist.

I sink to my knees and cross myself. “Oh God, come to my aid. Lord, make hast to help me.”

_To save me from the bullets. . ._

My voice sounds round and warm in the chapel, filling every inch of empty space with my presence. My knees press harshly against the ground, and I run a tired hand through my hair. Willing my voice not to sound dead and exhausted. “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,” I speak down towards the stone. 

I bow before her feet, waiting for hands upon my shoulders. She is pure, blinding light. “As it was in the beginning, and is, and ever shall be.” I kiss her feet – something I only ever do alone in the darkness. “World without end,” my soul says. “Amen.”

Out of the void, I suddenly feel that the chapel walls are cradling me in their palms. That I am held, and covered, and being fed the purest air. I breathe it down in gulps, savoring the candle smoke on my tongue. As far as I know, I am the only one who ever comes here like this – when it is dark, and alone, and even Christ sleeps.

I gaze up at the rafters until my eyes adjust to the light, then watch as the swirls of dust play with the shadows. Leftover incense and oil hum in my throat, and the scent of wine drifts to me from the cloth draping the altar. 

Here, and only here, my heart can be quiet.

Except I know that isn’t true.

Holmes has walked with me two more mornings after Lauds since that first time, and both times he looked surprised when I asked him to stay. Both times he walked in perfect pace with my steps. And he did not look confused, did not look let down, when my stories didn't flow as they did that first morning. When we walked mostly in silence, only our breaths and the caws of the birds. And the few words I did say, the beauty of the moors, the salt of the sea, it felt as though he was hearing entire stories as the simple thoughts passed through my chapped lips. Words that he caught in his hands, and kept warm between his palms, and then set free to fly out over the sea before we returned.

And both of those times, my heart had been utterly quiet.

Familiar shame grips me. I remember the heat of his hands. My dream . . .

“Forgive us our trespasses,” I whisper. I press my forehead to the cold stone. “Forgive me. . .”

_For what?_

I shake my head against the thought and breathe in deeply. Psalms rush through my mind until I choose one at random. Anything to quiet that wicked voice in my mind.

“He who lives under the protection of the Most High shall dwell under the shade of the Almighty.” My voice finds the melody in the words, and my soul settles as I sing them. “He will say to the Lord, ‘You are my shelter and my strength, my God in whom I trust’.”

Like magic, the black voices in my heart quickly fall silent, and once again my soul is at rest in the darkness. The candlelight wavers, flickering across stone. “For He will free you from the slanderer, and from the hunter’s snare.”

For a few moments, I am back in the cradling warmth of her bosom, back against my mother's chest when she first bowed my head and taught me to pray, kneeling before the small cross of woven straw she'd fixed to the wall. I am back in that first breathless peace. The blessed knowledge of _I Am_.

But then, behind me, the chapel door creaks open.

Fear shoots up my spine. My limbs are ice, frozen in their place kneeling on the ground. Cold air from outside rushes in across the floor, swallowing my body with starlight and rough wind. I force myself to keep praying, keep my eyes at her feet. “He will shade you with His wings. You will hide underneath His wings,” I quickly murmur.

Footsteps along the quiet stone, shivering up my neck. I do not want to know . . . I do not even want to guess. . . I clutch my hands together until my knuckles turn white, choking behind my white collar as I try to keep my voice steady. I struggle. “His faithfulness will be thy armour and thy shield.”

A figure casts black shadows along the far wall of the chapel. A giant ghost crackling towards the altar in the light from the candle. 

I recognize the ghost. My nose fills with rosewater.

“Thou will not fear the terror of the night,” I whisper. My voice is rough and raw, puffing breath into the air. I swallow hard over my dry throat, and my knees tremble against the ground. “Nor fear the arrow that flies by day.”

Holmes kneels beside me, just an arm’s length away. I hear his robes swish as they meet with the cold ground. Hear his muscles and his tendons shifting while he settles. His warmth hums along my side. A brilliant gold in the darkness.

I gaze at the Virgin’s feet. “A thousand will fall at your side,” I say lowly. “By your side, ten thousand will fall.”

I want to stop everything and run. I want to ask him if he comes here alone in the night, and if he knew that I was here, and if he knows my first name. 

I want to ask him if he knows that his hand always lingers near mine. And if he can see the shiver he places upon my skin. If he dreams . . .

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him fold over towards the ground. His pale hands are just flashes of white as they peek out from beneath his black robes. He kisses the foot of the altar. I hear his lips purse.

“But for you, death will never come near,” I say, watching the line of his spine. I unclench my hands, and gently lay them upon the floor at my sides. 

I close my eyes. “You will look with your eyes, and see the reward of sinners.”

Holmes clears his throat beside me, like warm honey in the silence. It shivers up my spine with heat and pulses between my legs. I shift my hips, and groan softly, willing the fire in my blood to settle.

_Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination._

I cannot breathe without smelling him. Cannot move without sensing his presence. It fills the small chapel just like He does during our prayers, snaking through the pews and the rafters like silk. Weaving across my lips, between my thighs, around my neck.

“Help me,” I barely whisper. I realize too late that I have said it out loud. I look up to the Mother of God with tears in my eyes, trying to block out everything but the brilliant white of her robes. My heart is racing. The candlelight paints gold across Holmes’ hands.

I open my mouth to continue the Psalm, but I cannot go on.

“ _John_ ,” she says. It is so quiet I barely hear her. “ _John_ ,” she whispers to me. “ _Neither be dismayed_.”

And then I hear something that makes the entire earth halt. It parts the Red Sea, and rises from the tomb, and separates the Light from the Dark.

It is a voice.

“For the Lord is your shelter and refuge; you have made the Most High your dwelling-place.”

I gasp and look to my right. See the words as they effortlessly fall from Holmes’ lips. See his throat move, and his jaw open, and the firelight flow through his hair.

Then I clutch my hand to my breast and choke on my own air. Holmes’ voice is the rich oil that anointed me when I took the collar. It is the silence after the last muddied bombs had quieted above the trenches. It is the stained-glass light that had fallen upon Gregory’s face the first time I saw him beside the little church.

It is the perfume Mary Magdelene used to wash Christ’s feet.

And then, to prove that it was not just a dream, Holmes speaks again. His eyes are closed. “Evil will not reach thee. Harm cannot approach thy tent.”

I’m trembling. Warmth pools up my spine and hums between my legs. Glory floods my chest and rests upon my shoulders. Pours down my throat. 

Holmes is beside me. He is _speaking_.

“For He has set his angels to guard you, and keep you safe in all your ways.”

His words burn inside my soul, and brush dust from my eyes. The words of Christ fall from his soft lips like jewels – as if they were only just now finally allowed to reveal their full splendor. I willingly drown in their beauty, awash with their fresh light. A helpless volunteer to be buried in the sea of his moving tongue.

Without thinking, I open my lips and speak the first word in my mind. “Holmes.”

It is barely a whisper in the dark, but still, he hears me. He looks up at me quickly, the next words of the Psalm halted in his half-opened mouth. Our eyes lock in the stillness – his glittering like the stars above. Long lashes and loose curls and a neck of smooth marble.

And something that looks like quiet, haunted fear in his eyes.

“Holmes,” I say again, as if I’m saying His name. I lick my dry lips, and I hold his gaze as I speak: “The angels will carry you in their arms," I go on, "in case you should be hurt by a stone.”

He sucks in a quiet breath, eyes blown wide. He looks at me, holding my gaze as gold pours from his mouth, “And Christ sayeth, ‘Because he clung to me, I shall free him. I shall lift him up, because he knows My Name’.”

“He will call upon Me,” I whisper back immediately. “And for My part, I will hear him.”

Holmes shifts, just barely, upon the cold floor. His left hand reaches out closer to my right. Fingertips buzzing where they nearly touch between us. “I am with him,” Holmes says quietly. His voice is so warm. “I am with him, yea I will hear him in his time of trouble.”

His eyes are wet as the candlelight flickers across his face. I feel the Virgin watching us, bathing us in her gaze. There are no bombs in this place. I know that now even more than I know that Christ saved me. “I shall rescue him and lead him to glory,” I say to Holmes. “I shall fill him with the endless length of days.”

His fingertips move, and then . . . _alleluia. . . alleluia, kyrie. . ._ his hand is over mine. The sound of our skin touching is so loud – a brilliant chorus. It echoes through the chapel like a mighty hum: _kyrie_!

I cling to him with my fingertips, trembling against his palm as he holds me. His fingers trace along my hand, my rough knuckles, the old scars from the Somme. I am trapped between Holmes’ skin and the House of the Lord.

She sings: “ _Let us go to the vineyards. . . there I will give you my love. . .”_

My blood does not boil over in shame at her words. I am frightened, but he holds me. My hand beneath his. 

“I shall show him my salvation,” he says quietly to me.

It is time for the ending of the prayer, but neither one of us moves to speak. Our chests rise in unison. Our breaths fog together in the air. She is watching us, watching each other, and his hand tangles with mine. 

There is a fierce ache in my chest, one that pushes me to lean towards him. I want to throw myself at his feet. Wrap my arms around his thighs. I want to smell him, beg, “ _Whisper every Psalm to me. Every one._ ”

And there is still fear in his eyes, but there is also something warm.

Suddenly his other hand is reaching towards my face. He blinks hard, and waits for me to move away. I don't. His thumb rests on my brow, smoothing over my frown. His fingers cup my cheek, and I can feel them as they tremble.

My breath shakes. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” I finally whisper.

I reach out and place my own thumb upon his chin, its tip barely resting on his full lower lip. He speaks again, putting gentle pressure upon my skin. “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.”

I remember screaming out those words, wrecked and bleeding beside the Somme. My breath hitches. “World without end,” I say back to him. I press my cheek into his hand. It feels like His hands upon my shoulders.

He reaches down to trace along the white collar at my throat, and I shiver and exhale as his fingertip brushes across my skin. I swallow at his touch. “Amen,” I breathe.

And we sit there together, kneeling on the floor and unable to look away. As he touches the purest white sign of my Ordination, and I still touch the lip that I somehow just heard speak. All around us, the earth suspends. The chaos waits.

He leans closer to me – so close that I can feel his breath upon my face. His chest moving closer, pulsing heat, the touch of his hands. The echoes of his prayers dripping down his open lips.

I am in awe.

“Sleep,” he whispers. Warm honey along my throat.

He pauses then, and I see something flicker through his eyes. Something that looks like a question, a pause. . . but then it’s gone.

“Holmes,” I whisper again. My voice blends in with the roaring wind beyond the walls. He closes his eyes when he hears me, face calm as if in prayer.

A sudden thought strikes me, shocking in its heat. I want to learn forward and press my lips to his long neck. I want to breathe in the scent of his skin, and feel the vibrations along his throat as he speaks, and taste the words as they leave his mouth before they even reach the air. I want to hear him say my name. Taste his fingertips after he traces them across the prayer book in his hands. Feel the soft ringlets of his curls against my palm. Over my lips. In my mouth. . .

I want him to guide me.

All at once, he rises, in a whoosh of cold air and black robes. He crosses himself before the Virgin, eyes fixed on her face, and then he strides away down the empty pews, leaving me in his wake. He pushes open the door, letting in a burst of wind and ice, and for a moment, he is silhouetted against the black sky.

The same silhouette that watched me from the tower. That ran to me across the moors.

“Amen,” I say again, as we stare at each other. I hold my breath. Watch his chest rise and fall.

And then he’s gone. Heavy wood slams behind him as he disappears into the moaning wind, leaving me in a rush of fog and moonlight and a blown out candle.

I sit on the cold stone, frozen and shivering and stunned. I hear many things at once – pure chaos in His chapel.

_For the wages of sin is death . . ._

_There I will give you my . . ._

_I see some. . . similarities, between you and Brother Holmes . . ._

_Guide him. . ._

_Lead me not into temptation. . ._

_Sleep. . ._

But above them all, two words burn like fire in my chest. They are two words that I heard whispered next to me in the trenches. That were my candlelight in the darkness, and my promise of rest. Two words I have not thought about in eleven long years. Two words which are the feeling of Holmes’ hands by the cliff.

I turn back towards the Mother of God, and I gaze upon her marble skin. Pure and whole like Holmes’ fingers. Like his long neck as he spoke.

And looking at her, I see sea-green eyes, and I speak the two words hovering in my chest. My voice echoes like a thousand “alleluia’s” at her feet.

“ _Sleep_ ,” Holmes had whispered. And now I answer, “Eala Bhàn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Verses and quotations used in this chapter, in no particular order:  
> Song of Solomon 6:10 "Who is this that appears like the dawn; fair as the moon, bright as the sun, majestic as the stars in procession?"
> 
> Revelation 4:11 "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created."
> 
> Romans 6:23 "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
> 
> 1 Samuel 18:1 "And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." -- The story of David and Jonathan can either be read as the greatest friendship in the Bible, or the most intense veiled love between two men. They'll come into play more later on!
> 
> Isaiah 41:10 "Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness."
> 
> Leviticus 18:22 "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it [is] abomination."
> 
> Psalm 91: The Psalm that John and Sherlock recite together. It is often used during Compline (night prayer) services, and is referred to as 'The Protection of the Most High.' The call and response would include the line: "He will conceal you with his wings; you will not fear the terror of the night."
> 
> Jonah 1:1 --- The story of Jonah, who was called by the Lord to deliver HIs message to Ninevah, but instead fled to Tarshish. On the boat to Tarshish, a terrible storm occurred. The other people on the boat believed it was punishment from God because Jonah had fled from His calling. So Jonah offered to be cast into the sea in order to calm the storm. Then God had a great fish come and swallow Jonah up, where he survived in its belly for three days. You can bet your ass that Jonah followed the Lord's calling from then on...
> 
> Matthew 26:27-28 --- The verses from the Last Supper, which Jesus held with his disciples the night he knew that Judas would betray him for a handful of coins (which would eventually lead to his crucifixion). At the Last Supper, Jesus took a cup of wine and passed it around the table, telling his disciples to drink, because it signified his blood whicih would be shed for them and their salvation. This is where the tradition of Communion (or the Eucharist) comes from.
> 
> "Eloi Eloi, Lama Sabachthani" -- means "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?". Jesus Christ said this on the cross as some of his last words, calling out to God. His last words then came afterwards, which were "it is finished."
> 
> John 14:27 "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."
> 
> Psalm 63 -- The Psalm John recites in his room early in the morning. "O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is. To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary. Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. Thus will I bless thee while I live: I will lift up my hands in thy name."
> 
> Luke 7:38 -- The story of Mary Magdalene (different from Mary, Christ's mother). "As she (Mary) stood behind him (Jesus) at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them."
> 
> John's mother says "Is tú mo ghrá" - which is one way to say "I love you" in Irish Gaelic. I'm not trying to be too exact or accurate with John's exact heritage, but this gives you a good hint.
> 
> John's final words in the chapter "Eala Bhàn", mean "white swan." We will learn the why / what / where behind this phrase in a later chapter! 
> 
> \--
> 
> Whew - I think that's all the references for now! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I know I reference other Bible stories in this chapter very vaguely, so if you need clarification I'm happy to provide it.
> 
> THANK YOU for all of the lovely support this fic has received! I love sharing priest!lock with you all, and I can't thank you enough for the kindness, encouragement, and squeeing I've gotten in comments. You all are the reason I love writing and sharing!
> 
> (And I promise, the explicit rating is coming........)


	5. I Slept But My Heart Was Awake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's all about ANUNA for the music this chapter!
> 
> For that gorgeous Celtic longing, listen to [Fill, Fill a Rún](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aXWu3JuPNQ/) (Come Back, Come Back, My Love).
> 
> For the haunting, eerie voices of Mass, listen to their arrangement of [Sanctus](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIK0PI1blB4/) (Holy).

_13th October 1927_

 

I have not had a nightmare in twelve straight nights.

The bombs are still there, of course, in my dreams. They hover at my elbows, snarling and clawing and hissing with hot steam. There are earthquakes, and thick black ghosts, and monsters from the deep. Mud falling from the sky in choking clumps like rain, and fire from the bowels of the earth. Dark voices moaning, pulling me down by my robes.

But then, the Heavens open. There is a beam of light, and a soft breeze.

There are endless, white clouds.

And at the center of them all, a floating figure beaming in white. It explodes through the darkness, and it hovers like a dove.

It is Jesus Christ, calling me to bow at His feet. He opens His mighty mouth, but nothing comes out.

It is Mary, Mother of God, opening her arms to call me home. She sings to me, “ _Let us go to the vineyards,_ ” and cascades of pomegranate seeds fall from her veil, dripping red.

It is myself, from before the war, reminding me of my first name. “ _John_ ,” I tell myself, in Gregory’s warm, rough voice, “ _John, you lived_.”

And it is Holmes.

It is Holmes, reaching out to trace his fingers across my cheeks, one palm on the scarred and hidden skin of my bare thigh. Holmes saying, “ _Though thou walk through the valley of the shadow of death, fear no evil, Father. For thou art with me. For I am with thee. For thou art with me. . ._ ”

And every night, when that chorus pours from his soft, open lips, the bombs are eradicated into a burst of fine dust. The demons are hushed, and I am freed from the snare. And all that’s left of the chaos is the eerie quiet that comes at the end of the battle, with whispered fog spilling across the blood-soaked moors, and the sound of a single crackling flame bathing the Virgin’s feet.

And in this way, I have not had a nightmare in twelve straight nights. I sleep through the darkness, and wake up with the birdsong, and when I rise, I ignore the mixture of elation and nausea churning in my gut as I follow my Brothers to Lauds.

Elation because He has saved me, and because I can finally sleep.

And nausea because it is _his_ voice that calms the storm, and not _His_.

_And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full with water. . ._

Eleven long years of waking with thick sweat on my brow. A scream in my hoarse throat, and a clench in my limbs.

_And the Disciples awoke Him, and said unto Him, “Master, carest thou not that we perish?”_

Long nights spent alone in the chapel in the darkness, shivering on the cold stone with only the company of my own voice. Until that night. . . until that night he found me there. . .and I was no longer alone. . .

_And Christ arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, “Peace! Be still.” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm._

The memory shivers up my spine like a breeze. “ _Sleep_ ,” he had whispered. And, therefore, I slept.

_And Christ said unto the Disciples, “Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith?”_

How I remember that voice, but cannot remember His. How she sings to me, in the softness, that though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and though my sinfulness is painted across his lips with gold, I shall not fear. . .

_And the Disciples feared exceedingly, and said one to another, “What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”_

And what manner of man is Holmes, that he can tell me to sleep, and I do?

Another voice calls me from my thoughts, from far away.

“You’re not going to eat any breakfast, Father?”

I blink, startled, and realize I’ve been staring down into a cup of now cold tea. The porcelain is clammy in my palms. Brother Kiernan looks at me with a hesitant frown on his face, and it occurs to me that he’s probably tried to get my attention more than once.

I look down at my plate as if I’ve never seen it before. It’s empty.

I clear my throat. “No, I don’t think . . . maybe later.”

I cringe as soon as the words leave my mouth; I sound just like an indecisive child. A child who’s hiding a secret instead of a priest speaking with his ordinand on the morning I'm supposed to deliver the full Mass at St. Ignatius.

Brother Kiernan gives me a fake smile and nods. It makes me unaccountably furious, knowing that a student feels the need to watch over me in a room where men nearing eighty-years-old also reside. I lie to myself and think that maybe my anger is like Christ’s – when he arrived at the Holy Temple, and saw the swindlers selling their goods, and turned over their tables full of wares in a rage. But I know full well that there is no righteousness in my anger, only self-loathing.

“I’m looking forward to your Mass, Father,” Brother Kiernan goes on. 

I unclench my hands from my teacup and breathe. “As am I,” I respond, trying to smile. My voice sounds like my stale tea.

He nods again, then suddenly everyone rises. Harsh wood scraping against stone. The swish of robes. I feel the clock in my breast start to tick down the time. Droning, heavy thuds until I must ascend the pulpit. Until I must don the white silk and the richly embroidered stoles.

And I think, as the entire world rises to their feet around me, that I try not to hate anything in this world, since His spirit hovers inside me, and yet, even after all this time, I hate when it is my turn in the rotation to lead Mass. 

I hate the eyes on me, and the weary yawns, and the careful looks away from my cane. I hate wearing the gold threads, and the white robes, and raising my hands. I hate the whispers.

“ _That Father Watson_ ,” the people say, standing around after Mass. “ _Such a shame what happened to him in that dreadful war. And so young. . ._

“ _I heard he went willingly. That he enlisted,_ ” others say. “ _Such a servant for Christ, he is. An inspiration. . ._ ”

How I hate it.

_Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseer, to feed the church of God, which He hath purchased with His own blood._

The verse breaks like a slap across my face, and I burn in shame. I want to catch the sleeve of one of my fellow priests passing by me and ask him if he knows of any other man of the cloth who detests his calling's highest honor in the same way as me, so that I could have respite from feeling wretched and alone.

Instead, I swallow hard, reveling in the press of my throat against my collar. I grip handfuls of my cassock in my fists, and I sit still as the ordinands and other priests file past one by one, waiting to exit until the small hall is completely empty.

I never noticed before, until him. Never noticed for years how I would wait to exit last from a room, following a cloud of black robes. How I would stand off to the side, or sit frozen in my seat, or rise only when no one's eyes could be on my slow and limping form.

And then he arrived. And I didn’t want to be the last one left in an empty room. Wanted to stand with someone, and walk with someone, and have someone’s eyes on me when I stood.

But still, I sit and wait now for the room to be empty. I count the feet as they pass, feel the warm but worried smiles reflect on the top of my bowed head. I start to pray, more earnestly than I ever prayed for my impending Mass, that none of them will stop and ask if I need any assistance to rise and stand.

Pale hands appear in front of my eyes where I look down at my lap.

My lungs freeze. I recognize long fingers, skin smooth and clean. I hold my breath, and blood tingles in my limbs, and I steel myself against the desire to simply wrap my rough hand around those fingers. To pull them to my breast.

I look up into Holmes’ face, blinking hard to make sure it’s not my imagination. He shines. The first angel to appear in the night sky before the wise men, to tell them that the world now had a Savior, that the Christ had been born.

Holmes looks down at my empty plate and raises his eyebrows. He looks radiant. Refreshed and well-rested and upright, casting glowing light onto my own ghostly form.

We have not spoken, have not looked at each other, since twelve nights ago on the chapel floor. 

He sits at my right while I teach. He is beside me during prayer. He is in my corridors, in my library, in my courtyards, in my oxygen. But since I said, “ _Amen_ ” his pale eyes have not so much as met mine.

Because I have not let them.

That is how it works for us, it seems. He gives me aspirin, and I stay silent. He pulls me back from the cliff, and I stay away. He walks along the moors by my side, and I leave him at the gates. He kneels beside me, and speaks to me, and tells me to sleep.

And I avoid him.

I avoid him, as Christ prolonged His prayer that night in the fig and olive-dripping garden, begging on His hands and knees in the dark, knowing that the cross awaited Him the moment He finally rose.

But I’ve dreamt. . . Oh, how I’ve dreamt of his face. Of his voice. . .

He’s waiting at my side, heat bathing me in warmth where I sit.

I want to smile and ask, “ _Are you going to tell me to eat something too?_ ” I want to joke with him, or ask after his latest essay, or hear him say he’s looking forward to my Mass.

But I can say none of those things, and neither can he.

We look at each other in the silent hall, as if the earth is holding its breath. As if the sea outside has frozen, with the froth still floating in the silent air. No wind.

I look up at him, and I tell myself that his eyes don’t travel down my throat.

And then, like the dove bursting from the Heavens to alight on Christ at His baptism, Holmes smiles. And even though it is small, though it barely changes the lines of his face, I tremble at the force of it, breathless with awe. 

My own voice murmurs in my head, one that echoes across soft midnight stone, and flickers in the light of a candle. 

“ _He will call upon me, and for my part, I will hear him. I will hear him._ ”

Holmes holds out a hand to me, and I take it without hesitation. His skin caresses mine, and his fingers are steady. He doesn’t pity me when I lean upon his strength to help me stand. Doesn’t hover or tut or ask me if I’m alright as my thigh shakes. He just holds my hand, and he hands me my cane, and the look he gives me just before he lets my fingers go tells me that he hasn’t forgotten either. That he still remembers every word, every breath breathed in that chapel.

And then we’re walking out of the stone walls, beyond the gates, across the moors. Walking far behind the group of the rest of our Brothers. Walking in silence, but saying twelve days’ worth of thoughts with our eyes. The measured steps of our feet, keeping perfectly in sync. The echoes of my stories still hiding in our clothes, warm and curling in the air between our bodies.

The sun is brilliant in the sky, brushed with silver clouds. At my side, the sea rushes and sings with its foam, pounding against the rocks and sending shivers up the cliff. We walk close enough that his black sleeve brushes constantly against mine, and I can hear the soft thump of his cross against his chest.

My heart is quiet.

“I’ve slept for almost two weeks,” I finally say to him, when the walls of St. Ignatius’ come into view across the grass.

He stops in his tracks, and turns to me then, and I suddenly want to reach out and touch the Face of God. 

I clench my hands behind my back.

The wind caresses his face, drawing his curls across his pale forehead like silk. I feel that I should fall to my knees, or lift my rosary to my lips, or clutch His Holy Word against my chest and moan, “ _alleluia, alleluia, allelu. . ._ ”

I feel that I should run. Wash my hands of the feeling of his.

His eyes devour me, slowly traveling from my crown to my feet. Warmth clings to my spine, the way His Words used to wash over me. The way His Words used to rumble and sigh in my throat, down my chest, along my thighs, between my palms as I prayed.

“I know,” he whispers, so softly I can barely hear it over the wind. The sound of his voice grips me in my chest and holds on. It is the salt of the earth, the city on a hill, the lamp that cannot be hidden. Cannot be doused.

It is _sanctus_.

And then, before I can even say anything in return, he is gone. Swallowed up by the high walls of St. Ignatius’ in the sun, his curls disappearing into the crowd that waits for me to limp inside, clear my throat, raise my hands, and speak.

 

\--

 

The cup trembles in my hands.

“And Christ sayeth, ‘Take this, all of ye, and drink from it. For this is the chalice of My blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which shall be poured out for ye and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of Me’.”

The crowd before me vanishes, and everything is replaced with pure gold, awash with light. The Holy Ghost is on my tongue, and He tastes of roses and fresh myrrh. My eyes are wet, blinded by the power of His Words.

I kneel before the chalice, and its glory overwhelms me. I am breathless, and the congregation murmurs, “The mystery of faith.”

Words pour from my lips, hushed and whispered beneath His wings. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One Lord.”

I cannot breathe without His breath. Cannot speak without His Words. 

_And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. . ._

For He saved me.

_And with all thy soul. . ._

For He knows me. 

_And with all thy mind. . ._

For He hears me. 

_And with all thy strength. . ._

For He speaks to me –-

_”Sleep,” I heard him say. “Fear not,” I heard her say._

I have been kneeling for too long, and the congregation’s looks are worried. A restless hum washes over their heads like thick smoke, clearing out the brilliant gold and replacing it with haze. 

I clear my throat and look back down to my knees against the floor. Fear prickles at the back of my neck as I move to stand. All eyes are on me, and the white of my robes is blinding. I grip my cane. Her hands are on my shoulders, soft and small.

“ _Rise,”_ she whispers in my soul.

In pain, I rise.

“At the Savior’s command," I cry, "and by divine teaching, we dare to say –”

Their voices join mine, a wave crashing onto the rocky shore:

“Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed by Thy name.”

The ceiling opens, the stained glass sings, and His glory sounds with trumpets. My voice rumbles and shakes.

“. . . Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven . . .”

My breath comes in short gasps. There is a pulling at my chest.

“. . .us this day our daily bread, and forgive us . . .”

The congregation continues on, but my voice suddenly leaves me. All at once, I am no longer standing by the altar. Am no longer bathed in his Heavenly gold, or draped with creamy silk. . .

No, I am in the mud. I am crawling. I am cold and covered in blood.

There are screams.

Their voices become a gnarled murmur, clawing at my robes. They pull me, with wicked hands, down. . . down. . . down away from the light. And there is smoke in my eyes, and the shrill of bombs in my ears, and the soldier next to me whispering, wailing, “ _Goodbye, eala bhàn. . . good God. . . I can't -- oh, Maggie. . .”_

And behold: out of the darkness, I see one head rise out of the mire. One pale face beaming up at me out of the churning black.

It is Holmes.

He looks at me with pure strength woven across his face, as I stand up at the heavenly altar shaking and afraid. As I fight to separate gunfire from the voices praying before me, and as my feet mistake white marble for a muddied river bank.

He alone looks up at me, breaking the flow of his prayer. He alone locks on to my eyes, and his gaze says, “ _Do not look away; look at me.”_

The crowd moans, “Lead us not into temptation. . . “

I cannot look away. He arrests me, as the rainbow, as the burning bush, as the empty tomb. . .

And slowly, ever so slowly, as I feel the weight of his clear eyes on my skin, the stained glass windows of St. Ignatius' break through the gunsmoke and the fire. The mud beneath my feet fades, and the screaming voices dim. 

I gulp down air, and all the while his eyes guide me to the world, lead me back from the bloody Somme and into the House of the Lord. Lead me home.

“. . . us from evil,” the crowd finishes. They fall still in the aftermath of prayer, anticipation for Communion hovering about their shoulders and bowed heads. 

And still, I cannot look away.

I clear my throat for the Doxology and relish the fresh silence in my ears. “Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil,” my voice rings out. “Graciously grant peace in our days.”

And with those words, he and I are suddenly alone in His house. Everything quiets, and all that exists are his grey eyes through the fog; his pale neck rising out of his robes like a beacon. His folded hands.

“That by the help of Your mercy,” I continue to say, “we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress.”

Holmes looks at me, and his gaze says, “ _I can hear you. Speak to me.”_

I go on. “As we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”

The crowd hums, and their voices are like the soft caresses of a fresh wave. “For the kingdom, the power and the glory are Yours now and forever. Amen.”

“Amen,” I say back. My voice sounds ten years younger in my ears. 

And still, among the incense, his soft gaze burns into me. It clings to my skin, setting me ablaze the way my body yearns at His throne.

And for the first time since he ever looked up at me in a doorway after my lecture, I do not wish to escape the way his eyes read the lines of my face.

All through the Sign of Peace, he is there. Through the Breaking of the Bread, he does not falter. Every word I speak, his breath is in my lungs the way His used to be. Every time I raise my hands, the ghost of his touch strengthens my tired spine. He is in every corner of the chapel, weaving like doves among the rafters. 

Cool wine on my dry skin.

It is the longest I have ever gone during a Mass without thinking of Him. Years and decades of “ _Lord be with you’s”_ and “ _Blessed be God forever’s_ ”, and here I stand leading a congregation with thoughts of another man’s voice.

Another man’s warmth and touch upon my skin.

Another man’s ears hearing the sounds of my prayers.

My thoughts are still churning when it is time for Communion, my lips saying rote words by memory alone. I stand before the crowd, and try not to hunch over beneath the force of their gaze. I push back against it, gripping my cane and standing as tall as I can. Allowing myself to take comfort in the fact that two of those eyes are his. 

With a steady hand, I place a wafer on each member of the congregation’s tongue as they line up and kneel before me to receive it. “The body of Christ,” I hear myself say as I place one wafer after another. But my heart says, “ _Sleep, sleep, sleep. . .”_

And then: Holmes. He is the last one in line. 

My hand shakes.

“ _John,”_ she suddenly whispers. I have not heard her voice all morning. It winds its way between the heavy layers of my robes, settling soft and fluttering against the skin of my chest. “ _John, the soul of David was knit with the soul of Jonathan._ ”

He walks slowly and kneels before me, sinking to his knees like silk. The light reflects off his curls, and ribbons of incense dance across his scalp. I nearly moan, the same way I’ve done thousands of times while calling out to Him, while in pure ecstasy over the sound of His Name - the taste of it in my mouth.

Holmes looks up at me, soft curls brushing from his face. The room stills.

“ _I know. . ._ ”

“The body of Christ,” I whisper. My voice is thin, nearly a mist.

He holds my gaze and opens his soft mouth, preparing to accept His body. And I suddenly think that maybe I could press my fingers between his lips. That I could stroke his tongue, and caress his breath, and feel the ghosts of his words against my palm. That I could taste the way his tongue would form the Lord's Name beyond his lips.

Instead I take the wafer, the same way I’ve done for hundreds of other kneelers hundreds of times, and I place it, just so, on the center of his tongue.

He sucks in a breath, a tiny moan in his throat. As the wild sound of it reaches my ears, I cannot move. His breath shivers across my skin like lightning and grips me at my core.

And his lips – those lips which I heard form His Words in the moonlit dark – they slowly, ever so slowly, start to close around my fingers. Until my fingertips are wetted with the moisture from his tongue, and his mouth is slightly stretched around me, holding me with his lips.

_For our God is a consuming fire. . ._

Fire in my breast. His lips around my skin --

“Holmes,” I say, but it is barely just a breath. His eyes are wide and fixed on me, and I can see, hidden in the depths of the reverent grey, that there is fear. 

That there is also awe.

I feel that same awe reflected across my own features, thoroughly unable to speak or move, and then she is behind me, brushing against my nape with her voice.

“ _His cheeks are like beds of spice yielding perfume,_ " she whispers. " _His lips are like lilies dripping with myrrh._ ”

By my feet I see his pale hand reach forward from his heavy sleeves, emerging like a lotus from the black, wet mud. I stand frozen, waiting to see what he will do in the silence; if he will disappear, or fly like my dreams, or consume my own spirit into his, woven into the muscle behind his ribcage, within his lungs, his beating heart.

Instead he simply reaches out, and he gently touches my cane. Smooth fingers brush against the old, gnarled wood. Breath shivers out of my lungs, as if I can feel the press of his touch on my own bones. As if his fingertips are beneath my skin, and around my muscles, and inside my blood.

He looks at me, and the ache in his eyes is so clear it makes me gasp. “ _I know you hate this,_ ” his look says. His fingers caress my cane, the same way they first floated across His Words all those mornings ago at Lauds. “ _But look now,_ ” I can read in his eyes. “ _Look and see – now it is beautiful._ ”

_And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth His hand and touched him. And He saith unto him, “I am willing to be your healer; be thou cleansed.” And as soon as He had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed._

I pull my fingers from his mouth. They glisten in the sunlight.

“ _Sleep_ ,” he had commanded. Only he is not the Christ. He cannot command me.

And yet, and yet. . . I slept. . .

Holmes looks at me, and he blinks hard, and I am captured by his gaze; held and arrested and split open with his eyes. The fabric of my robes presses heavily against my thighs. Between my legs.

He breathes out one word, “Father” – just a whoosh between his lips. For one eternal moment, I believe the entire living earth just heard his song. That his breath has cascaded down my throat, and settled beneath my clothes.

And then he is rising, and gliding back to his pew, and I realize I must somehow speak. I am alone at the altar.

No one is looking at me oddly; no wave of restlessness rolls through the crowd. I realize that what felt like hours must have taken place in only a few seconds. Just a flash compared to my lifetime. The lifetime He died to give me.

“The Lord be with you,” I say out at the crowd. I try not to flinch when my voice breaks.

They answer as a warm, humming wave, “And with your spirit.”

“Our help is in the Name of the Lord,” I say. My fingertips are still wet.

 _”Help me_ ” I hear my soul crying. I miss his voice. _”Mother of God, help me._ ”

The crowd proclaims, “Christ, Who made Heaven and earth.” They rise.

My heart is racing. The old battle drum beats harshly in my chest.

The bombs had fallen, the men had screamed, and _He_ had saved me from the Somme.

The bombs had fallen, the men had screamed, and _he_ had saved me, had brought me back . . .

“May almighty God bless you. The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” I cry out. My throat aches.

“Amen,” they all say back at me.

I gasp for air, choking. “Ite, missa est.”

 

\--

 

_14th October 1927_

 

I dreamt last night, the same dream I’ve had twelve nights before. Only last night, when the bombs shrieked, Christ did not appear in the sky. Nor did the Virgin, nor did myself. Nor did Holmes with his glowing wings.

Instead I crawled along on my belly, nearly breathless to reach the man. I crawled across the wire, and beneath the bullets, and through the mud.

And when I reached him, he was crying, and his tears were the color of wine.

“ _Drink, the blood of Christ,”_ I commanded him, voice screaming over the chaos. I held his innards in my hands, red slipping through my fingers. 

His chest was bare.

“ _Our Father, Who art in Heaven,”_ I started to cry, but he shook his head no. Sweat dripped down his face, fat droplets thick with dirt.

He pressed his fingers to my throat, gripping my collar so tightly in his hand that it hurt. And then he opened his eyes, and I screamed, because I recognized the blue.

“ _Let us go to the vineyards,”_ I begged him, while I tried to save his body.

His curls were wet, with blood or with rain, I didn't know. And when he finally spoke, the chaos ceased. 

“ _I know._ ”

-

The echo of his words haunts me as I look out my classroom window, waiting for the ordinands to file inside behind me for their seminar. I hear them coming, laughing and conversing through the corridor. Hear their footsteps, and their chairs move, and the hushed pause that they’re ready to begin.

I tear my face away from the sound of the sea, preparing to meet my fate. Like Thomas, who prepared his heart to look down upon the pierced hands of the Risen Lord, not knowing whether he would even believe it. Whether he would faint.

But Holmes is gone.

“Where is Holmes?” I ask as I take my place with my notes. I pride myself that my voice remains steady, unconcerned.

Brother Hales shifts in his chair and pulls some papers from beneath his seat. “Sorry, Father. Brother Holmes asked Father Colmas if he could receive early Penance. He is back at St. Ignatius’ – Father Colmas let him go.”

Immediately, I see Holmes sitting in the stale, dark room of the Confessional, with only dappled light streaming in across his cheeks, covered in swirling, ancient dust. I want to leap out the window, and sprint across the moors, and set him free into the sun.

I wonder if someone else is hearing the song of his voice as we speak. If the low hum of the ocean is currently pouring from his throat into the dusty gloom, laying out a private list of sins and shame. 

Grief for him – and grief for the loss of his secrets - overwhelms me.

“Is that alright, Father?”

The ordinands are waiting for me to speak, staring at me and waiting for me to move. They look worried, as if I could fall over and crumble at the slightest breath. As if I might start to scream. I hold back a sigh.

It is my curse, these days - to sit like a statue and be stared at like a relic. A relic who does not laugh, and lives trapped surrounded by stone, and who has never felt a warm touch upon the bare parts of his skin. Who has never battled death with fiery bullets, nor dreamt of lips, nor kissed Gregory beneath the boughs. . .

“Yes, of course,” I say. My fingers play with the buttons of my cassock. “Yes, I pray to Christ that he is finding his restoration.”

They all nod. Problem solved. Holmes gone from their thoughts.

“ _Sleep. . ._ ”

Somehow I manage to teach, just like I’ve taught hundreds of times before. The words fall effortlessly from my mouth and land straight onto their notes like smooth water. There are questions raised, and pens scratching, and fingers running through hair.

And when our session ends, and they rise to leave, Brother Ryland approaches my side. It takes me an extra moment to realize that the seminar has even happened - that they are actually leaving, instead of waiting to begin.

“Holmes’ essay,” is all he says, placing folded papers upon my desk. It was a simple assignment: expound on the internal religious theories of a Saint. I gaze down at the folded papers, recognizing a familiar slanted scrawl shining through the thin page. It moves me in a way I can’t describe that Holmes had still wanted to hand it in.

When the Brothers have all left, the room feels gigantic, like I am shrinking into the stone, turning into one of the dried leaves that litter the ground. My breath shakes, and I wipe my fingertips to dry them on my robes, even though I know they are no longer wet from the press of his lips. The paper wrinkles atop my warm palm.

Holmes’ essay is on Jeanne D’Arc, and I’m stopped cold in my tracks. Never, in all my years of teaching, has any ordinand picked a woman. I try to read it, already sucked into the beautiful power of his words, the way they shine from the paper like tumbling jewels. But then, when I've only skimmed a few sentences of his prose, my eyes are distracted by an unfamiliar mark along the top. 

There, where the ordinands all scribble their surnames for me to see, a word is written - one which I have never before seen in my life.

All at once, with a single breath, the earth falls away. All I can see is the ghost of the pen in his gentle hand as he had placed the inky tip upon the top of the page.

It is a secret kept for me, meant for my eyes, and mine alone. It is the dove returning the olive branch to Noah in his Ark. It is the stone rolled away. The light, when before there was none.

I feel a pull at my breast, a warm cord, as if his heart is attached to mine. As if far away, across the moors, his blood beats in tune to me.

“ _Oh Israel,_ ” she whispers, “ _Fear not, for I have redeemed thee. I have called thee by thy name, and thou art mine._ ”

The word at the top of the page calls out to me, like the first prayers I had ever heard sung in a chapel for His Name, and I had opened my mouth, for the very first time, and released my golden lark to join them.

Holmes had sat down, and lifted his pen, and left for me a single secret word:

“Sherlock.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Verses used, and other notes:
> 
> Song of Solomon 5:2 "I slept but my heart was awake. Listen! My beloved is knocking: "Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless one. My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night."  
> Song of Solomon 5:13 "His cheeks are like beds of spice yielding perfume. His lips are like lilies dripping with myrrh."  
> Mark 4:35-41 - The story of Jesus calming the storm, after his disciples woke him from sleeping to plead with him to save them.  
> Mark 11:15-19 - When Jesus arrived in the Temple with his disciples, he saw that it had been turned into a large market, with unfair bargaining and swindlers cheating the people who were coming there to worship and trying to buy a sacrifice. So in righteous anger (the only time Jesus shows anger like this), he turns over all of the tables with their wares, and destroys the inside of the Temple.  
> Acts 20:28 "Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood."  
> Psalm 23:4 "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."  
> Matthew 5:13-15 -- The parable of Jesus' followers being the salt of the earth, the city on a hill, and a candle that should not be covered.  
> Mark 12:30 "And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment."  
> Mark 1:41-42 -- Jesus heals a man in the crowd of leprosy simply by touching him. People with leprosy were the ultimate outcasts, and touching them was considered a death sentence. Jesus touching people considered so "dirty" was a very intense way to show His love.  
> Genesis 8:11 -- God commanded Noah to build his ark to survive the flood God planned to send upon the earth to wipe everything out and start over. After the storms and rain ceased, Noah went to the window of the ark and sent out a dove. It returned empty handed. He sent it out again, and it returned with an olive branch, the first sign of life on earth. When he sent it out again, and it didn't return, Noah knew it was God's sign that he could inhabit the earth again.  
> Isaiah 43:1 "But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called [thee] by thy name; thou [art] mine."  
> -We get a few more clues about the origin of "eala bhan" in this chapter, but I promise a more thorough explanation is coming soon!  
> -I took the lines from Mass from basic Mass 'scripts' I could find. I have no idea if those lines are accurate for this time period. I'm also well aware I've skipped large portions of the normal Mass ceremony, as well as critical lines during Communion.  
> -For those without a religious background, Communion is modeled after Jesus' Last Supper with his disciples, where he took wine and called it his blood, and took bread and called it his body, both of which would be spilled on the cross for us sinners to receive redemption. Since then, Communion involves the eating of Christ's body (usually a broken piece of bread or a wafer), and the drinking of Christ's blood (wine or grape juice) before receiving full forgiveness of sins. The priest really does place the wafer on your tongue, but it's not common to kneel during this process. Obviously Sherlock doesn't give a damn about tradition.  
> -Jeanne D'Arc is Joan of Arc, just using the original French version of her name. If you're unfamiliar with her, she was a young woman who in the early 1400's believed she received messages from God and his angels to lead the French army to recover French land from the English. She actually did so, and went into battles, but was later captured by the British and burned at the stake when she was about 19 years old. She was canonized as a Saint in 1920.  
> -"The stone rolled away" refers to Christ rising from the dead after the third day. When the guards went to check on his tomb, the giant stone guarding the entrance had been rolled away to the side, and the tomb was empty.  
> I think that's it! If you have any more questions, feel free to ask. I know this is a shorter chapter, but I promise a BIG ONE is coming up next! It's been a slow burn up until this point, but it's about to get red hot!
> 
> THANK YOU for the kindness you all have shared! I adore sharing this fic with you all.


	6. Let Him Kiss Me with the Kisses of His Mouth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We finally come to the full meaning of "Eala Bhàn." Dòmhnall Ruadh Chorùna wrote it for his love Magaidh (who was waiting for him back at home in Ireland) during the Battle of the Somme, the same battle John served in as a chaplain. By some accounts, many of the lyrics were written literally in the trenches.  
> Listen to a gorgeous version by Julie Fowlis [HERE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qWWgntTdO0).  
> To read the heartwrenching Gaelic lyrics, with English translation, go [HERE](http://celticlyricscorner.net/capercaillie/aneala.htm).  
> And don't worry, Dòmhnall survived the battle, despite the hopelessness of the lyrics he penned.
> 
> For some more sacred religious music to set the mood, give a listen to [this version](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpRrf6ZwSRc) of "Ave Maria" sung by Benedictine Nuns.
> 
> To re-listen to "Mo Ghile Mear" (My Gallant Darling) - which is relevant for this chapter - listen [HERE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxjvNUNXhkU).

_23rd October 1927_

 

It all begins on a Tuesday.

“Storm’s working its way down the coast,” Father Jacobs mutters as we relax in the library with our tea for recreation.

Father Colmas merely hums; the others prepare to go back to their reading. There is stale air between old pages, whispered Latin directed at laps. Thick, humble tea smoke curling up around our robes, and weathered skin, dry and pale from decades spent indoors.

It is normalcy; the life I have lived for hundreds and hundreds of years. The life where there is peace, and thick stone walls, and fragile panes of stained glass.

And yet. . .

I am viscerally transported by his words. Thrown out into the trembling skies, tumbling helplessly from the heavens.

“ _Storm. . . Storm. . . Storm’s working its way down the coast. . ._ ”

My skin prickles with burning ice, and my breath pierces like nails in my chest. In a deafening flash, the faded teak wood of our old library fades away, and instead I am blinded by lightning, red rain battering a shore. Soaking wet uniforms caked with mud.

Wet curls.

_Behold, the storm of the Lord has gone forth in wrath; Even a whirling tempest; It shall swirl down upon the head of the wicked._

I gasp. The silence is screaming at me, begging to be broken. I blink hard and look around me, vision focusing on black robes. Pale hands gripping pages out of the fog of the stormy mire, and teacups rising from the thick, churning deep. I hear myself speak, as if from far, far away, whispering over the sound of nature's war against the rocky coast.

“Should we take shelter inland?” my voice asks. Heads pop up in surprise at my voice. It’s a rare thing for anyone to hear it outside of singing during prayer. Outside of reading prepared notes off a page. A gentle “good morning.”

Father Harrows gives me _that_ look - _Don’t worry, Father Watson, the storm isn’t out to get you. The thunder will not harm you if you just stay in your bed. . ._ \- and sets down his Latin in his lap.

He smiles gently in a way that turns my stomach inside out. “It will be an easy one, I hear. Our Brothers up near Aberystwyth at St. Bartholomew’s wired us this morning. Just a bit of loud rain, is what they said.”

I burn with shame at my foolishness, at giving myself away. But still, the warning beats heavily in my chest.

_Upon the wicked He shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest. This shall be the portion of their cup – the lot of the wicked._

“Of course,” I say softly. I try to smile. “Yes, of course.”

“ _Snares,_ ” He whispers to me. I nearly jump at the sound of His voice. “ _Fire and brimstone. . . Gone forth in wrath--_ ”

I breathe out quickly and shake my head, pushing away the snarl in my ears. I expect everything to fall silent again – for the book pages once again to turn. The tea to be sipped, and the cloaks to be rustled, and the steady even breathing of lungs in unison to resound. But Father Colmas clears his throat in a way that makes everyone turn towards his face.

“Share with us, won’t you Watson?” He leans forward. “How are you getting on with your charge?”

There is a twinkle in his eyes that I do not like. I feel ill.

“My charge?” I ask.

As if I don’t already know. As if I don’t still feel the warmth of his smooth palms against my skin. His lips around my fingers. As if I don’t dream --

Father Woodley chimes in with a calm, bored voice, as if we’re simply speaking of our favorite Scriptures to pass the time. “Yes, with Brother Holmes. We’ve all noticed you seem to have. . . reached him.”

My throat is burning.

“ _Father. . ._ ”

“I – I haven’t really. . .There hasn't been . . . and I, well --” I fade out, stuttering, and Father Harrows takes pity on me.

“He seems to trust you, at least,” he says softly. “It may help us to reach him. To find out what he wants out of his time here, and out of the priesthood.”

“I may have some answers, actually, that could help us,” cuts in Father Ryland. He looks embarrassed. “I . . . well, Brother Hales really. . He has some sort of connection to the Holmes family. Something about a mutual acquaintance from his schooldays. It seems that Holmes’ appearance here and his . . . unique situation prompted Hales to communicate with the friend from back home. In order to learn more, you see.”

I feel that I’m underwater, gasping, and nothing but liquid is filling my hot lungs. I want to leap up, dash across the room, and shake the words from Father Ryland’s lips. The violence of it frightens me in a way I haven’t been frightened since I caught myself weeks ago with an erection trapped between my cassock and the stone.

“The friend?” I prompt, when nobody moves to speak more.

Father Ryland clears his throat and shifts in his seat, burning on his cheeks. “I fear our suspicions were all correct. Brother Holmes indeed came from extreme poverty; his father worked the fields, and mother raised nine children. I’m told . . . from what Brother Hales could gather . . . it appears Holmes may have . . stolen. . some papers when he was quite young. From the house they were working for.”

“Papers?” I ask. My voice sounds like thunder in my ears.

“Ledger-book pages, as they tell it. It appears he used them to teach himself to read, remarkable, really -- but when word got out, as you could guess, an eviction followed –”

Father Ryland rambles on, but my vision goes white. And in the center, kneeling in grey, there is a small boy with dark curls. He is crouched down, and hunched over pages, and holding them in his grimy fingers. And he is whispering, just under his breath, the sounds of the words in his hands. With nobody there to hear him. Nobody there to encourage him on . . .

“. . . found haven with the Church, once the family gave him up. And it appears he’s lived and worked in the Church his entire life since. Taught himself everything in order to apply to seminary - received excellent references. So here we are.”

The room falls deathly silent once Father Ryland finishes speaking, so that the waves outside echo and hum across our robes. Then Father Colmas nods once, with a weariness in his neck.

“It is as we all suspected,” he says solemnly. 

“But Father –”

All eyes turn towards Father Barry in the corner – we always forget he’s in the room until he moves. Just like they all do with me. Father Colmas raises his eyebrows, and Father Barry takes a deep breath.

“Surely you’ve heard . . . you’ve heard the whispers. What they’re saying.”

I close my eyes. See Holmes walking slowly beside a limping priest with a cane, far behind his peers with their laughter and their smiles, far behind his peers who are running across the moors. See him bowing his head to listen to my foolish words, handing me my cane while everyone else looks carefully away. Dimmed by my darkness, the silence that hovers around my skin. . .

“The ordinands,” Father Barry continues, ignoring the warning glance from Father Harrows. “It appears now word has spread of Brother Holmes’ . . unfortunate upbringing, there is some confusion. Some of them may . . . well, some of our Brothers may feel that . . . since, as we all know, one can gain food and housing through the priesthood, and then with his Vow . . .”

He trails off, bringing a thin hand to his lips. I sit frozen in my chair, forcing myself to look normal and breathe, so that no one can see that my insides are burning. That my veins are splitting open and my fingers are itching to slap.

“They fear that Brother Holmes has no true Faith,” Father Colmas says decisively. Calmly, as if he hasn’t just suggested that Holmes might end up in Hell. "They feel he is using the priesthood as his meal ticket, and his silence covers his lack of conviction. Am I right in what they are saying, Brother Barry?"

Father Barry blushes. “I don’t agree with them, of course, but –”

“He has Faith,” I say suddenly. The words surprise myself on my lips. All eyes are on me. 

Holmes kneeling before the Virgin’s feet, eyes wet and fingers at my throat. “ _For the Lord is your shelter and refuge; you have made the Most High your dwelling-place.”_

“He has Faith,” I say again, and my voice just barely doesn’t shake.

Holmes bowing over stone. Bare back dripping with sweat. . .

Father Colmas smiles at me. “The Lord has guided you, Watson, to lead him as you have done. You have been willing, and He has used you in His mysterious ways.”

On my knees before the Madonna. The flock of doves witnessing my lips on Holmes’ cock . . .

“Amen,” everyone around me is saying, a familiar chorus of voices. They sound like sand dripping down my throat.

“Amen,” I say back.

“ _Amen,_ ” I had whispered to a silhouette in the chapel door.

“Storm’s working its way down the coast,” Father Jacobs says again, and no one flinches, no one even tries to suggest to him that he’s already told us this before.

_Fire and brimstone._

My head pounds. The pages in my lap shake, and my tea has turned ice cold.

Her voice is the smallest wind, tiny pearls tinkling against the windows like river pebbles falling gently from Christ's hand: “ _Fear not._ ”

 

\--

 

_24th October 1927_

Holmes is not at Mass. 

I notice immediately – cannot even take one step inside the chapel without noticing that the air doesn’t smell like rosewater and warm books. Cannot even fathom sinking to my knees with His praises on my lips when my lungs feel this stale, when my skin isn’t tingling, when that cord in my breast isn’t pulling, pulling, _pulling_ me towards his pale hands as they trace the inky words spilling over my lips.

He is gone.

I turn quickly towards Father Colmas as we file inside, soft sunlight dappling across cloaks and bowed heads, but he isn’t here – not anymore. His mind is already flying up above the stained-glass windows, wrapped securely around the Virgin’s palms and held within her veil. He is already in worship, communing with the Most High God.

And meanwhile, I search for a human head of curls. . .

_And Jacob was afraid as he entered the presence of God, and said, ‘How dreadful, how awesome is this place! This is none other but the House of God, and this is the Gate of Heaven._

A flash of longing pulses through me, tingling in my fingers. I remember the days, lifetimes ago, when entering the Lord’s house had filled me with warmth. With dovesong, and clean air, and trumpets in my ears. Soft, clean velvet under my toes, and the Blessed strength of His hands.

And then I’d watched, eleven years ago, as the pearly Gates of Heaven became shattered and blasted with mud. With bloodied screams, and tattered cloth, and smoke filled with steaming hot metal. And I’d crawled towards it on my belly, tried to find my way towards the Gates, and searched for pearly white among the black and red and fire.

And the only white I’d found had been the teeth of Dòmhnall next to me, gazing skyward as he moaned out, “ _Eala bhàn. . . my Maggie. . ._ ” That, and the blinding reflection of my own stained and rumpled collar, which flashed at me from the rusted helmet of the last soldier whose soul I tried to save before He called for me. Called for me to meet Him face to face.

Except I’d lived.

I’d lived, and now I repay that debt by searching for pale skin inside His House, and by aching to hear _his_ voice instead of _His_ in my ears.

I let my feet guide me farther inside the small chapel, but all the while my mind rebels against me, pleading to turn and sprint away. I want to burst through the wooden doors, and dash across the stone, and run until I finally have his smooth hands in my sight. I want to grab his robes, whisper, “ _Don’t you see? I cannot pray unless you’re there. I cannot sing to Him unless you’re with me – unless your fingers are tracing the words. . ._ ”

I want to feel the press of his sleeve against mine.

We bow our heads to pray, and I feel my neck dip, and the familiar prayers start to leave my lips. But my mind is gone.

It is back in time, to just a week ago, when I saw Holmes standing still in the courtyard, surrounded by cold pollen blowing wistfully in the breeze and staring straight up at grey clouds. His neck had been bare.

And I allowed my quiet feet to step upon a pile of old leaves, causing him to startle from his thoughts and look at me. 

And his grey eyes covered my skin in smooth, smooth water. Took all the breath from my lungs and threw it across the moors; threw it straight up to the stars. Threw it at her feet.

“Holmes,” I said, from where we stood on opposite ends of the courtyard. And I saw in his face that he knew I was really whispering, “ _Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes. . ._ ”

He held out his hand, the Pillar of Fire by night to guide my steps, and I walked towards it, fingers outstretched, until I could grasp his skin. And I held his smooth fingers in my rough and calloused palm. Young skin surrounded with old - skin that still remembered the feel of blood.

The wind moaned across our robes. “ _His arms are rods of gold set with topaz_ ,” she whispered.

His fingers twitched between mine, disappearing under the black folds of his sleeve. And I fought, how I fought, against the urge to throw myself down. To lie on my face, and kiss his feet, and cry, “ _Alleluia! Because you spoke, I slept._ ”

Instead I raised my chin, feeling like a foolish soldier, and reached into my robes for some papers folded in two, handling them gently now that they held _two_ secrets within their folds.

She breathed against my nape, like a breeze in stifling heat, “ _A good name is better than precious ointment, than perfume._ ”

“Your essay,” I said to him, pressing the smooth pages into his hands, wanting my words to rest against his tongue like drops of clear honey, the way his words always did so effortlessly to mine.

And then I went, and left him there, and knew that he was reading one handwritten word from my pen – one word that I had wickedly hoped would beat in his breast to the tap, tap, tap of my wooden cane limping away.

I knew that he was reading one lone word written carefully in my own hand: “John.” 

And it had thrilled me, bursting in the black pit of my core, that of all the eyes to see my simple name written for the first time in years – of all the eyes on earth that could see, it had been his.

“Amen,” I say now, and I’m shocked that Mass is over. I glance quickly left and right, and sigh in relief when it appears nobody is giving me confused looks. I must have gone through the lines and postures without even thought. It thrills me inwardly, like a tiny spark of flame, that I am so deep, so entrenched in His way of life that my body remembers His Mass even if my mind is elsewhere.

And it makes me nauseated to realize I’ve said “alleluia” without any soul behind the word.

Our feet rustle across the stone as we all move to exit, with me at the back as always, cane echoing towards the rafters. The heavy wooden doors of the chapel bang open before us, drowning us in a wave of freezing air and biting wind. Rain drops burst against our faces and drench our lips.

The storm came while we were praying, and now the hail pelts down upon the roof.

“Starting to come down,” Father Jacobs says under his breath in awe. “Aye, she’s starting to come down.”

Everyone merely hums, donning their hoods to protect against the rain. They march out into the beginning of the storm with no break in their steps, no hesitation in their limbs. I watch them go, feeling stuck and rooted to the ground, eyes peering through the black mist as they disappear ahead of me, one by one into the thick, wet fog. Into the whistling wind and howling eaves and rough, trembling air. The darkness pulses, beckons, groans for me to follow - for my body to disappear into the storm. For my bones to crack and dissolve in the ripping air.

I tear my gaze away from the darkness and turn back to the Blessed Virgin, enthroned in a warm cloud of incense smoke and oil; leftover prayers from our lips still clinging to her robes. Lightning flashes, bathing her marble face in hot fire. “ _Fear not_ ,” I hear her cry out over the screaming wind. It is my mother’s voice, my mother’s brogue, rumbling in my bones. 

Nothing in my sluggish mind can rationalize this sudden fear that grips me; this fear that has been growing, gnawing, snarling in my chest since Father Jacobs calmly looked up from his tea and stated a storm was on its way - simple as that.

And yet. . . and yet. . . I am lost and gripped with terror. Every moment the looming clouds groan warnings in my chest, and after weeks of sweet relief, once again I have not slept. I see the Holy Water covering my hands turn into blood. And I cannot see him, cannot find Holmes, because he was not at Mass.

And it terrifies me even more that my fear has not found any relief. Not by an hour spent praying in His House, or the whispered prayers constantly on my tongue. That my terror has only grown because his sleeve had not been beside mine, and his fingers had not been stroking along His Words as they poured off my lips.

I force my numb, wet lips to move, whispering under my breath. “I sought the Lord, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.”

“What’s that, Father Watson?” Brother Hales has turned back to me in the doorway, one foot already growing wet out in the rain. He’s holding open the heavy door for me, concern written across his brows.

I look back once more towards the Mother of God, calm and still in the midst of the chaos beyond. Kept dry by the roof of His House from the storm. Her veil is not soaked.

“Forgive me,” I say, running a hand across the buttons of my robes. My cane shakes, and I turn back to Hales. “I was merely praying to bring an end to my thoughts. From the Mass.”

He smiles at me, _that_ smile, and steps back so I can walk past him. My cassock drags heavily behind me, like claws pulling me back towards the church, and towards her feet.

“Are you well, Father?”

I must be walking like a ninety-year-old man. I turn my face up towards the clouds, letting the rain pelt against my cheeks. My hood is off.

Hales is waiting for me, hand still back on the door.

“Brother,” I say calmly up towards the sky. I tell myself, deep down in my chest, that wherever he is, Holmes can hear me. Can hear my voice over the rising thunder, calling out to him across the stone.

_Sherlock. . ._

I turn back to Hales; beckon him to walk beside me. “Tell me, have you seen Brother Holmes? He was gone from Mass.”

My voice is steady, but my mad heart rages in my throat. I’m terrified, for one blinding moment, that maybe I didn’t say Holmes. That maybe I’d said, “Sherlock,” and given my entire soul away.

Hales doesn’t even blink. “I assume he’s on another silent retreat,” he says back. “That or he’s gone for Penance.” We walk quickly towards the covered corridor, winding through stone pillars. Wet leaves cling to my neck and cloak. Something in his tone unsettles me, ringing in the back of my mind like an off-key bell.

“A retreat?” I say. “Father Colmas didn’t mention. I doubt he would set off for St. Ignatius’ in this weather.”

Hales shrugs. “Not sure what he does up there when he calls them his ‘retreats,’ but where else would he be? Not like he’s visiting anyone.” And before I can open my mouth to respond, Hales is nodding, “Father,” and jogging off towards his chambers down the darkened maze of stone, leaving me alone in the rain with his words echoing in my ears.

-

Holmes is not at his lessons.

Every time my eyes roam to my right, they are disappointed; all they’re greeted with is the rough and splintered wood of an old chair. No long neck rising from a thick woolen cloak. No pale eyes watching me as the words leave my mouth.

He is not at Vespers. The entire blessed chapel seems darker without the light from his skin. My voice is dimmer, muted in grey, without his fingers to caress the prayers. 

The panic builds in my throat, choking me and burning by the final “amen.” My fingers tremble. Blood roars so fiercely in my veins that I cannot even hear the sound of her voice over the rushing noise. I realize, in a sudden flash of gut-wrenching shame, that I stopped listening for the sound of His voice days and weeks ago.

My body somehow moves me through the day, slow and steady and quiet in my steps amidst the storm - absolutely nothing amiss from the sight of me roaming the halls. And still my heart races when I peer hopefully around corners, and my cane beats out a siren of his name as my longing chokes me; bounding across the aching moors, and struggling to reach his ears.

Holmes is not at supper, and still the rain pounds.

I break my self-imposed isolation and sit to eat near my fellow priests. I lean across the table lazily, like I’ve just realized an odd fact. “But where is Brother Holmes?” I ask over the din of supper. My pulse blasts in my veins. 

Holmes pulling me from the cliff, running towards me through the dark. . .

All of them shrug. Father Ryland frowns, “I assumed he was in silent prayer?”

Father Colmas doesn’t even look up from his soup. “I had not granted it, but I’m sure that’s what he’s been doing today. I’ll speak with him of protocols for such requests, of course, but I cannot stand in the way of His time with our Lord –”

I cannot hear his words anymore; there is a roar blaring in my ears. One that wails at me, “ _Go to him, go to him, go. . ._ ” 

I stand up quickly from the table, so quickly that my cane falls to the floor, echoing through the small dining room and causing all conversation to cease. 

“Forgive me,” I say into the piercing silence. 

_Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. . ._

My voice is weak and soft, a dying bird trembling in the middle of the stone. “I’ve simply . . . I find myself in need of some reflection before Compline. I’ll just . . . I shall be in my chambers,” I stutter out.

And I wonder, as I stand there with all eyes on me, if I ever noticed, before him, how their gazes linger on my thigh? If I truly noticed, with such clarity, how they all change the tone of their voices when addressing me? Softer, more quiet, like speaking down to a frightened child.

If I ever noticed their looks of pity before he looked at me without?

They’re looking at me that way now, an entire room fixated on my weakness; everyone holding their collective breath to see if I will fall. I suppress a grunt as I bend down to pick up my cane, moving quickly so no one else will have the time to pick it up for me.

He had touched it, he had caressed it with his fingers, he had brought it to me out by the cliff, brought it so I could stand on my own two feet, with my spine straight. . .

Lightning flashes through the dining hall, splintering across black robes.

“Should one of us call for you?” Father Barry asks, voice so soft I can barely hear it.

Thunder roars. “No, thank you,” I say. I start to walk. “I shall see you all at prayer.”

I keep my eyes fixed on the old doorway as I make my way between tables, every spoon halted mid-air as my breathing echoes, harsh and ugly.

The door screams out as I push it open, wailing over the storm.

“ _I opened for my beloved, but my beloved had left,_ ” she croons into my ear, whispering over the sound of my robes brushing my ankles. I walk faster, rushing through twisting hallways of freezing wet stone. My chest heaves. 

“ _My heart sank at his departure,_ ” she whispers as I fly. 

Faster and faster, I push my body through the corridors and the fog.

“ _Snares_ ,” He commands to the beat of my footsteps. “ _Fire, and brimstone, and snares, and snares, and snares. . ._ ”

I reach the staircase, already winded with sweat dripping down my neck. I grasp the handrail in my shaking palm and start to haul myself up the stairs. My leg screams.

“ _I looked for him but did not find him,_ ” she calls out to me. Her voice flutters down the stairwell like a sad flock of doves. I move faster, stair by stair, until my chest moans like the thunder. Until the wheezing in my lungs muffles out the sound of the wailing wind.

Lightning illuminates the stairwell, turning my palms to blinding white snow. I keep running.

“ _I looked for him . . ._ ”

When I reach the top step, I don’t even stop to catch my breath. I fly down the cramped hallway, feet slapping against the stone. The building moans, threatening to clasp its deadly palms around me. Threatening to snuff out the candlelight I pray will be shining in his chambers.

I reach his door, gasping, then throw myself against the heavy wood with a harsh grunt. It gives way before me, spilling me into the room like a sack of black cloth. Instantly, I hold my breath. Lightning strikes, pouring through every inch of his small chamber; the place where he had knelt with sweat dripping down his bare spine, the place where he had locked eyes with me, and sucked in a breath, and bowed . . .

I look around wildly, turning like a madman towards every corner, praying that my eyes will finally see the curls they’ve spent two days searching for.

But the room is empty.

All the stale air leaves my lungs in a gasping rush. I can barely stand. In a numb daze, I make myself hobble towards his small bed, where the sheets lie pristine, a single wooden cross above his pillow tacked to the wall.

I stand there still and dumb, chest aching and heaving beneath my black robes, and my mind races. 

My mind races, trying somehow to answer where he is and if he’s alright, and meanwhile my tired body wants to climb down onto his bed. Wants to settle between his thin sheets, and press my cheek against his pillow, and stroke and stroke and stroke my fingertips into the crevices that caress his skin in the thick black of night, when he is alone. . .

Something is disturbing the smooth bedsheets. I reach towards them with shaking fingers, barely allowing myself to breathe. I pull back the thin linen, expecting to see a prayer book lying there, or His Word.

Instead, it is nothing but a single sheet of paper, creased and folded in a square. Hidden.

A wild boldness washes over me, tingling in my limbs. I unfold it, breath trembling, and I hold it towards the light of the rising stars so I can see.

It is the last page of his essay – the page where I had left him my secret with my pen. I see it there, written in my shaky familiar scrawl at the bottom: “John.” And there, just beside it, a single wet mark in a perfect circle – the size a teardrop would make if it fell elegantly onto the paper.

The same mark I saw littered across Dòmhnall’s stained parchments, rolled up and bloodied and kissed when he thought that he was dying. When he thought that those papers would never reach his poor Maggie waiting for him across the ocean shores. Gone forever – swallowed by the thick red mud of a steaming trench.

And below his tear stain, new lines written, this time in Holmes’ own hand: “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

My vision goes grey. I am gasping, burning, like a trembling black smudge upon the earth. He roars in my ears over the thunder, huge blasts calling down my sin for all to hear. 

" _An abomination!_ " He bellows. " _Their blood. . . their blood. . ._ "

I shut my eyes. I see Holmes’ soft, pale hand writing it. Taking up his pen, and writing those words, and looking, _looking_ at my given name, with a fallen tear. . .

“ _I looked for him but did not find him,”_ she whispers through my thoughts. I latch on to her voice like the sunrise that had risen over the Somme. The sunrise that had told me that the bombs were no longer falling. The sunrise that I thought would be my last sight on earth.

“ _I called him, but he did not answer._ ”

“Holmes,” I hear myself whisper. My eyes sting and grow wet. Without knowing why, I suddenly find myself lurching towards the window. I press my cheek and hands to the icy glass, gazing out, peering over the storming black moors. Searching for curls.

I clutch his paper to my breast, letting it feel the pulse of my heart through my cassock wool.

“Holmes,” I say again, as if he could somehow hear my voice carried on the gale.

The rain pounds into the earth, striking at the window pane like shattering glass. Rich ocean foam churns in the distance through the thick and gnarled fog, crashing against the base of the cliff and splattering mud towards the skies.

Lightning strikes again, illuminating the cliffs and beach with ghostly, washed out light. An eerie paleness spilling across the wicked coast to strip it bare.

And I see him.

Just a black dot billowing on the shore, lonely and cold. He is down on the beach, down where the waves snarl across the milky sand.

I cry out, breath fogging the glass, and I drop the paper clutched in my numb hands.

I start to run.

I run through the door, down the hallway and towards the narrow stairs. Fly down the staircase, cane never touching the stone, while the shadows clutch at my robes. They pull at me, yank at me, hiss and gnash out in my mind.

She tries to call out to me, to sing to me, as I’m flying through open courtyards. The moors moan in the wind, long, wet grasses pulling me back towards the stone. I cannot hear her over the wails – over the pulse of the blood in my veins. 

The cord in my breast pulls me; pulls and pulls and pulls, fiercely sharp and white-hot to the touch. I cannot be too late . . .

Wet leaves slap my skin, and I run as if I will perish if my legs cease their sprint; I run until I think my aching chest will give out. Will burn into ash. I fly across the moors, letting the rain pelt my face, icy drops stinging my eyes. Drenching my skin. I run down the narrow pathway, muddy and sliding and hurling me down towards the shore – one small black dot tumbling in folds of wet fabric down the side of the cliff.

And as I run, I cannot hear Him, or her, or even the sound of my own breath. I can only hear his voice, “ _sleep_ ,” like a calm breeze halting the storm. And I know, as I hear it, that some of the water stinging my eyes is my own.

When I reach the bottom of the path, I stumble hard and heavy in the wet sand. The thunder envelops me, rolls over me, and presses me down into the earth. I struggle, gasping, gripping my cane as I fly over the uneven ground. Holmes is before me, facing out to the sea, with his wet cassock billowing in the gale. He is like the Burning Bush, calling me towards him even as my weak skin burns with the fire. Beckoning me, even as my heart wrenches within me in terror.

He does not see me.

“Holmes!” I cry out to him over the storm. The wind snarls, and he cannot hear. My leg feels like hot ashes beneath me. 

“Holmes!” I try again.

He whips around, startled, and I gasp out as his eyes widen in shock. His skin is glowing, framed by the black of his hair – dripping curls.

He hurries towards me, arms outstretched, and catches me as I begin to fall. His strong hands grip my forearms, and I immediately sink into his strength. My legs buckle beneath me, knees being pulled towards the sand, and I feel the fight drain from my body in one great rush. For one second, one blessed moment, I let my cheek rest against his warm chest.

Her voice surrounds me, soft warmth as his heart beats beneath my skin. “ _Fear not. . . let us go to the vineyards. . . there I will give you my --_ ”

I pull back, weak and trembling, and fight to hold myself upright in the sand. His hands hover in the air, still gripping the ghosts of my shoulders, the same way he had stood in an empty courtyard what feels like hundreds of years ago.

He looks concerned – terrified – and my throat burns as I watch his fingers twitch to reach out and touch me again.

“Where have you been?” I cry out to him over the screaming storm. “What are you doing?”

He licks his lips, and my blood beats madly thinking he is about to speak.

But instead, his face twists in a grimace, in utter agony, and he tears his gaze back towards the waves. I nearly moan at the loss.

The waves start to pull and lick at our ankles, rushing across the bottom of our robes and dragging them out to sea. I plant my cane, lift my head, and stand my ground.

And I realize, in one startling moment of piercing clarity, that Holmes’ face now looks like the faces of the men I’d crawled towards on the Somme. White with fear, and wrecked with loss, and searching, _searching_ for the light amidst the black.

Without thinking, I reach up to touch the white collar at my throat. My chest burns, but my voice is strong. “The Lord is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation,” I cry out to him. I take a step closer, pulling my trembling legs through the churn of the foam. The rain muffles my voice. “This is my God, and I will praise Him, my father’s God, and I will exalt Him.”

Holmes does not move, does not even blink, but I can feel the intensity of his focus on my words like a Pillar of Fire from the sky. I step closer, not bothering to wipe the salt and water from my face. “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous!”

My chest clenches as Holmes wipes a hand over his twisting mouth, thin shoulders hunched around his frame beneath his wet robes. I press on: “Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

“ _Fear not,_ ” she suddenly sings over the thunder. “ _Take heart, for I will be beside you. Live, for God’s sake, John. Think of me and live._ ”

Only she had never uttered those last words, and neither had the Christ.

It had been Gregory – Gregory who’d said them in a short letter clenched in my palms. One delivered to me in the middle of France as we slowly trudged towards the Somme. One written to me after I had not seen or heard from him in eight long years. 

I blink from my thoughts, see Holmes still standing before me looking wretched. I reach out for his arm, breath shattering in my lungs when my fingertips caress his thin bones. “Take heart, for I will be beside you,” I say softly, so quietly I wonder whether he can even hear it over the wind.

Holmes whips around to look at me, lips parted and wet. He knows that that was not Scripture leaving my mouth, and the air crackles. I feel her palms upon my shoulders, pushing me one step closer. The waves surround us.

“Speak,” I whisper. My voice is pleading. “Holmes, speak to me.”

His face trembles again, briefly illuminated with a flash of light: The Holy Ghost. The wind whips curls across his face and into his pale eyes. 

He stays silent.

“Cast all your anxieties upon Him,” I call out; I beg. “Because He cares for you, He hears you.”

Holmes looks at me, and our eyes lock with a brilliant flash of heat, and I know, more than I know that He knows my own name, that Holmes has understood everything I am trying to say.

That I just cried out to him, “ _Cast all your anxieties upon Him,_ ” but that I meant, “ _Cast all your anxieties upon me. Because I care for you, I hear you. Because I care for you . . ._ ”

His face crumbles. I grip his arm harder. His eyes are falling stars.

“I want to speak,” he wrenches out, voice trembling and choked.

My chest soars. “Then speak.”

He tries to look away, but fails. His eyes are riveted to my face, blown wide, the same way I gaze upon the Virgin. He licks the rain from his wet lips. “I cannot. . .” he whispers. 

Again, my bold feet lead me forward, so close that I can feel the heat of his chest through my wet robes. His eyes fall upon my collar, looked exhausted and pained. I reach up with my other hand, dropping my cane into the shallows. Thunder booms.

“I will hear you,” I tell him. I plead with him. I beg him.

A moan escapes from his chest, a wretched black sound grasping its claws in the wind. He closes his eyes. “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man,” he says quickly. His voice is flat and cold, nothing like the warmth and velvet of “ _sleep_.” 

“God is faithful,” he goes on. “And He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it –”

“Have you not known? Have you not heard?” I cry, holding him closer in my arms. With a rush of boldness I reach up and brush the wet curls from his forehead, fluttering warmth filling my breast when the sound of trumpets glow strong in my ears. I still feel her behind me. “The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth!”

Holmes opens his eyes, bright with pain, and my voice breaks as I spill to him my soul – the secret that I have kept with me since I was a child and first heard her golden voice. 

“She does not faint or grow weary; her understanding is unsearchable,” I call out to him. Holmes gasps, and one pale hand reaches up to rest upon my shoulder. The waves roar. “She gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might, she increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,” I say. 

Holmes is wilting before me, growing smaller beneath the weariness upon his shoulders. I feel stronger, stronger even than that wicked night spent sprinting across the Somme through bullets with hot metal in my hands. My chest burns – burns with the power which parted the towering Red Sea. 

His thumb traces across my collar, sending shivers down my spine. I cannot look away from his eyes, and I suck in a breath as he parts his lips. “The God who equipped me with strength hath made my way blameless,” he says quietly. Gone is the choking black pain in his voice. Gone are the snarls of torment. His voice is incense, the pure red wine that passed smooth and cool through Christ’s lips. “She hath made my feet like the feet of a deer, and set me secure upon the heights. She trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.”

I swallow thickly, blinking back the water in my eyes. He looks so fragile. “She trains your hands for war,” I say back to him.

I feel him trembling beneath my hands, swaying towards me and my body. His breath is shuttering in his lungs. “What is this?” he asks quietly, and I see the full fear in his eyes. See the fear that I have felt every night since I first locked eyes with his. See the longing, the aching, the piercing black fear of death.

See the question on his lips that I have wailed into my pillow in the darkness of night, making me quake and tremble more than my clinging fear of the bombs. Why He has made me want to reach out and taste His name upon Holmes’ lips. Why He has left me cold, unable to pray, unless his sleeve is brushing against mine.

And why she still sings to me, “ _John, neither be dismayed. . ._ ”

Lightning strikes, bathing his fearful face with its thin, bleak glow, and with a burst of warmth, her answer is suddenly upon me. I gasp at the realization as the Heavens open and pour down her reassurance on my skin.

I look at Holmes, I look at _Sherlock_ , and his skin is no longer pure marble. His eyes are not the olives on the branch that the dove brought back to the Ark within its beak. His wings are gone – the wings that had held him aloft to save me in my dreams. He is not the Burning Bush, nor the Pillar of Fire, nor the rosewater poured on Christ’s feet.

I look at him, wet and cold and lost beneath the rain. And I see, for the first time in my life since I saw Gregory beside the small church, that standing before me is a man, just a man whose palm is on my shoulder. A man who is begging me, pleading with me once more as he again parts his lips to ask, “Father, what is this?”

Without hesitation my arms pull him quickly to my chest, embracing him under the weeping heavens and before the wide sea. He falls into me, pressing his cheek to my neck and clutching my spine. I whisper his answer with his curls against my lips. “We shall mount up with wings like eagles,” I say into his ear. “We shall run and not be weary; we shall walk and not be faint.”

He shakes against me, and I shiver as I realize no one has touched me like this since that day I walked away from Gregory in the shade from the sad, green boughs. No one has held me, caressed my skin – not even her hands upon my shoulders. 

It feels like that sunrise over the Somme, the way the Lord’s Prayer tastes like honey on my tongue. It feels like emerging from the Baptismal waters with oil cleansing the soles of my feet. 

It feels like _sanctus_ , whispered down from the flock of angels at His right hand.

I open my eyes, looking over his shoulder out to the waves, and my chest vibrates when I see a vision appearing through the fog.

It is Mary, Mother of God, walking towards us on the water. Her feet are bare, her veil the stars, and she is opening her mouth filled with beautiful fire. 

She sings to us, “ _Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth._ ”

The earth trembles, and still she remains dry through the storm.

I weave my fingers through Holmes’ hair. “Speak to me,” I whisper, thrilling when my chest vibrates against his.

“Father,” I hear pressed against the skin of my neck.

My soul yearns, the same way it yearns before the altar to praise His Name. It yearns to hold him in my arms as equals, as man to man. Heartbeat to heartbeat. It yearns to hear the secret written on a page spoken out loud. “Speak to me,” I beg him again.

And this time he whispers, “John.”

My name in his voice is the water pressed to Christ’s lips after forty days and forty nights alone in the wilderness. It is the manna from Heaven. The lamb’s blood over the door signaling: this house is protected in His eyes.

In her eyes.

I gaze up at him, skin glowing through the sheets of pelting rain. And I touch his cheek, hear myself whispering, “Sherlock,” into the storm. And as she watches us from her Holy perch above the waters, his eyes water, and he kisses me.

The winds cease, the waves calm, and everything fades but his lips on mine. Warm, wet skin pressed to my mouth I use to praise His Name. Soft lips tasting the gasping moan rising in my chest. Oh God, Thou art my God, I taste him.

“Let us go to the vineyards, to see if the vines are in bloom,” I whisper against his lips, breath fogging in the icy mist. He swallows my words. “To see if the pomegranates are in bloom.”

“John,” he breathes into my mouth.

My mouth caresses his lips, the warm wetness from his tongue. My voice breaks as I share her secret words with him, “There I will give you my love.”

His hand is on my cheek, holding my face as if I were the golden, Holy chalice. He kisses me between his words, gasping against my mouth. “Arise, come my darling," he breathes. "My beautiful one, come with me.”

Ecstasy burns in my veins like the Holy Ghost in the heat of prayer. It consumes me, overwhelms me, and I cry out, “Mother of God!”

His hands are on my skin, my neck and face, and I am drowning in the wine of his voice. It is the fiery strength that covered my skin when I prostrated at my Ordination. It is the rolling awe, the love larger than the Heavens, that she places within my breast as I pray.

It is the feeling of waking up on the banks of Somme covered in blood, and realizing that the sunrise had not been my last.

It is His death, and her forgiveness.

He kisses my forehead, fingers brushing back my hair like no one has ever done for me in my life. I press my palms against his chest, soaked and wet in the unrelenting storm.

“Eala bhàn,” I whisper. I run my thumb across his lips – his human lips. “Mo eala bhàn.”

And then, even as the storm cracks and booms across the sky, and as the rain drives down harder, and the waves churn at our feet – even then, the light from Heaven shines softly upon my face, because Sherlock is smiling, _smiling_ down at me.

And I know such a thing could never result in blood and death. In eternal damnation.

He bends down quickly to retrieve my cane from the sandy shallows, then takes my hand in both of his, and presses my cane into my cold fingers. As if he is pressing a beautiful offering into the hands of Christ. The wise men, kneeling with myrrh before the baby in the manger, before the Christ in Mary's arms.

The way David must have placed his hand in Johnathan's in the golden court. The way Joseph must have lifted Mary onto the back of the tired mule.

“Come, my darling,” Sherlock says to me again, and I close my eyes and shiver at the sound. My hand tightens in his, “Yes.”

He leads me, guides me with his strength through the black of the night. I follow him up the muddy path, and over fallen trees, and across the soaking moors.

Moors soaked with rainwater which cleansed my skin, and not with blood from my hands. And I do not care that I am limping beside him. That my hands are caught between his fingers and my cane.

He leads me towards the high stone walls, fluttering in the strikes of lightning. We make our way to the chapel, both of us silently agreeing the path of our steps. He opens the door for me gently, standing aside so I can come in first from the rain. Immediately I am wrapped in thick warmth within the walls; the velvet incense still hovering in the air from Compline even though it had already long passed. The heat from voices singing out praises without mine to guide them; the ghosts of warm breaths.

She is waiting for us, cloaked in white, and I watch in silent awe as Sherlock runs to her in the chapel, raindrops echoing towards the stained-glass as they drip and fall from his clothes and hair. He throws himself at her feet, breathing prayers into the stone, and my heart beats madly as I watch him cross himself in reverence. As I watch him press his lips to her Blessed feet in the dark – the same lips he had pressed to mine just minutes ago along the shore.

The storm wails outside, throwing itself upon the sacred chapel walls. But, even as it thrashes and moans, we are safe. He finishes his prayers, just gentle murmurings, and then he turns to me in the moonlight, illuminated with silver fog. For one moment, everything halts; only the sound of my aching breathing from running through the storm fills the air, and the raindrops dripping from our bodies onto the stone like soft drops.

He holds out his hand from where he kneels. Whispers, simply, “John.”

And oh . . . the sound of my name spoken aloud in His Blessed House . . . precious and gentle like silk. . . like Holy waters . . .

My feet propel myself towards him, traveling between the pews. I reach for his hand, reach for it like I reached for the soldiers along the Somme. I kneel beside him, feeling her gaze like a breeze upon my cheek.

He holds my face in his large hands, and suddenly I cannot even remember his last name. Cannot remember any names except _Mother of God_ and _Sherlock_ and _John_.

I nod, ever so slightly, and he releases a sigh like a moan. He kisses me again, humming against my lips like a prayer at her feet. The kiss bathes my spine in heat - the awe the Disciples felt when Christ lifted one simple loaf to feed thousands.

I want to weep. “Your eyes are like doves,” I whisper, voice breaking. 

He embraces my shoulders; grips me. “Your mouth like the choicest wine.”

And I realize, kneeling before the altar with his lips upon my own, that our words are indistinguishable from the prayers I sing to His ears. From the words I cried out over the sound of the bombs, and the words I cherish on my lips each morning when I rise before the sun.

I feel his fingers at my throat, softly stroking the collar about my neck. “Sherlock,” I breathe, and I feel his touch shiver against my skin. His fingertips dip beneath the pure white, slowly pulling it away from my throat. I look up towards the Heavens, baring myself, and shiver as thunder rattles against the windows, threatening to shatter and cover her veil with rain.

His lips are on my neck, kissing me at the place where that flash of white cloth marks me as Holy. Set apart for Him.

He kisses me there, and I moan the same way I do when overcome with His grace – the same way I cry out every year on the anniversary of the day that He saved me.

“Sherlock,” I whisper again, and I know he feels the vibrations of my voice against his lips caressing my throat. 

He breathes into my skin, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? She is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”

But suddenly, listening as he speaks those words into my chest, I am afraid - gripped with panic. I cup his head in my palm, threading my fingers through wet curls, and pull his face back so I can see. I feel myself shaking.

“What will we do?” I whisper, as if she will not hear me, and my voice sounds as thin as her veil over her marble hair. 

For a flashing second, I see the same fear reflected in his soft, grey eyes. For one moment, kneeling at her feet in His house, we are not rising eagles, but just two men afraid.

But, then he blinks, and places his hand upon my cheek. I press against it.

“Let me see you again,” he says back, and I know what he’s trying to say. That he doesn’t want to see me at Lauds, or at his lessons, or limping through the corridors, or hunched over my tea. 

He wants to _see_ me.

I nod, my lungs releasing a breathless, “Yes.”

He kisses me again, just the barest brush of his lips against my own. It shivers across my skin, the pulse of his breath across my tongue. “There are things I need to tell you,” he says softly.

My eyes are wet. “About your Vow?”

His lips are parted and full. “Yes. About everything.”

I do not know how to respond. I feel weightless and unmoored, only his palm on my cheek to keep me rooted to the earth. “See me again,” I say, and he nods - the silent power of Moses' hand when turned the staff to a snake, and back again. Then, with pain in my eyes, I struggle to my feet and stand.

They will be looking for us soon, and I know we’re both thinking the same thing:

I must leave. Immediately. Before we are looked for and found.

But still, I reach for him where he kneels at my feet, surrounded by black, wet robes. He catches my hand, presses it to his swollen lips, and sighs against it.

“Whom shall I fear?” I hear myself asking, praying that she will hear me, hear the terror in my voice. Praying that she will once again answer, “ _Fear no one. Fear not, and neither be dismayed._ ”

But then he reaches for my cane, and all my thoughts of her cease. I stand motionless, holding my breath, as his fingers touch the wood. I forbid myself from closing my eyes. And as I watch, shivering, Sherlock leans forward and kisses it, holding his lips to the gnarled surface of my cane by the light of the stained-glass stars.

He meets my gaze. “Mo ghile mear,” he whispers into the wood. “My gallant darling.”

I catch my breath, shaking, and feel a tear fall from my eyes. It lands on his forehead, glistening, and he does not wipe it away.

_Both of them have committed an abomination. . . their blood shall be upon them ---_

“The soul of David was knit with the soul of Johnathan,” I say back to him, reaching with my other hand to wipe my tear from the smooth skin beneath his curls. 

His eyes are so full. Deep and blue. He nods. 

And then, with an ache in my breast so sharp it makes me think that I am once again just sixteen, walking away from a man standing alone beneath a tree, I pull my hand away, and move my cane until his fingers fall back to his side.

I limp towards the doorway, hating the echo of my cane against the stone. Wanting to turn and flee back to his presence, and throw myself under his skin. My fingers twitch against the heavy doorknob when I reach it, still fearful of the storm beyond even though I had stood beneath the weeping, moaning heavens and _kissed_.

I turn back to him where he still kneels softly against the ground, watching me walking away from him, disappearing out into the fog.

I want to open my mouth and pour out my soul before I leave him in this place. Because if I leave, and when I leave, I know I may never _see_ him again. I want to tell him that his kisses tasted Holier than the Eucharist. I want to tell him that I had forgotten, and only just now remembered, that I have lips.

I want to tell him that he is my Johnathan, and I am his.

Instead I simply say, “Alleluia,” pushing the word through the chapel to his ears. 

He presses his hand to his chest, eyes locked on to me. “Alleluia,” he whispers back.

And as I tear my gaze away, and press open the heavy door into the storm - as the wet leaves cling to my soaking robes, and the rain pelts sharply against my cheeks, and along my neck - I realize I am waiting for the lightning to strike me down onto the stone. That I will be swooped up, and flung out to the sea, and be eternally damned to almost-taste the wine of Sherlock's mouth.

And I think, as I walk to my chambers fearing snares around each corner, that the sight of Sherlock Holmes whispering, “ _alleluia_ ” with kiss-swollen lips cannot be wrong.

It cannot be evil, it cannot be sin, it cannot, it cannot, it cannot . . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Verses referenced, and other notes:
> 
> First of all, there are A TON of verses in this chapter, so many that to quote and list them all would run over the end notes limit. So I've decided to explicitly reference ones which are stated in full in the chapter, or play an integral part. If you have any questions, feel free to let me know! As always, I opt for emotional impact over accuracy, so keep that in mind :)
> 
> -Song of Solomon 1:2 "Let him kiss me . . ."  
> -Jeremiah 23:19 "Behold, the storm of the Lord has gone forth . . ."  
> -Psalm 11:6 "Upon the wicked he shall rain down snares, fire and brimstone . . ."  
> -Genesis 28:17 "And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God. . ."  
> -Leviticus 20:13 "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman. . ."  
> -Isaiah 40:28-31 "Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God . . ."  
> -Isaiah 41:10 "Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed, for I am your God. . ."  
> -Exodus 15:2 "The Lord is my strength and my song . . ."  
> -Psalm 18:32-34 "The God who equipped me with strength hath made my way blameless. . ."  
> -Psalm 34:4 "I sought the Lord, and he heard me . . ."  
> -1 Corinthians 10:13 "No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man . . ."  
> -Joshua 1:9-11 "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous . . ."  
> -Psalm 27:1 "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? . . ."  
> -Song of Solomon 7:12 "Let us go to the vineyards . . ."  
> -1 Peter 5:7 "Cast all your anxieties upon him . . ."  
> -Song of Solomon 5:14 "His arms are rods of gold. . ."  
> -Ecclesiastes 7:1 "A good name is better than precious ointment. . ."  
> -Song of Solomon 5:6 "I opened for my beloved, but my beloved had left . . ."  
> -Song of Solomon 2:10 "Arise, come my darling, my beautiful one, come with me. . ."
> 
> John and Sherlock's phrases to each other during and in between their kisses are all from Song of Solomon.
> 
> To clarify, just in case, all verses that reference the Virgin Mary doing or saying something ('she' instead of 'he') are my *own* changes to the verses. The original Bible verses are all about God, and therefore contain "he" as the pronoun. We will learn more about Sherlock's perceived connection with Jeanne D'Arc (who also heard voices), and how this might also relate to John, in later chapters.
> 
> The "Pillar of Fire" refers to the pillar of fire the Lord sent down each night to lead the Israelites out of Egypt towards the promised land. During the day, it became a pillar of cloud.
> 
> The "Burning Bush" refers to how God revealed himself to Moses, by showing him a bush that was on fire but not burning. God told Moses he had chosen him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, and this passage is where the famous name for God "I AM" comes from. Later in Moses' journey leading the Israelites, they must cross the Red Sea to escape the Egyptian army chasing after them. God tells Moses to raise his hand and part the waters, so he does, letting the Israelites cross on dry land. When the Egyptians followed them, the Sea once again filled the path with water, drowning them all.
> 
> Next time . . . we finally earn that explicit rating! Thanks SO much for sticking around during this slow, slow burn. I know chapter postings are a bit erratic, so thank you all for your kind words, encouragement, enthusiasm, and patience. I absolutely love sharing this story with you all <3


	7. I Have Gathered My Myrrh With My Spice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sincere thanks to all of you for being patient in waiting for this next chapter. This fic is very emotional for me to write, and I burned out a bit during Chapter 6 - hence my need for a little break. Now, I'm back in love with it again, and I can't wait to share this newest installment with you all. To all of you who told me you were excited for Chapter 7, I owe you my deepest gratitude.
> 
> We've reached my favorite song of this entire fic soundtrack! Listen to "Dh’èirich mi moch, b' fheàrr nach do dh’èirich" by Julie Fowlis [HERE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC-CWsQ-KTo/) (particularly during the latter half of this chapter).
> 
> For your religious soundtrack, immerse yourself in the type of Gregorian chant Father Watson might sing (in my version of events, at least). Listen to a version of "Te Deum" [HERE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_gcJc1MmCQ/).

_25th October 1927_

My eyes sting with exhaustion as the earliest wisps of morning fog slip quietly under my door.

I have not slept.

There is an ache in my limbs, and a numbing in my chest, and the terrifying silence that comes from spending all night lying on my back in the vast and lonely dark, watching and waiting and listening for voices yet only hearing the moan of the wind over my breaths.

I listen, and only the silence screams back. Silence and the beating of my blood in my veins.

I listen, but He does not condemn me from His mighty throne. Does not shatter the small window of my chambers with lightning, or burst down my door in fiery rage to drag me away, roaring, “ _Fire and brimstone, their blood shall be upon them. An abomination --_ ”

Nor does she come to me with flowers, gently floating across the mists to calm the storm. She does not drape her veil around me, or whisper not to fear, or sing, “ _Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth – his human lips._ ”

So I lie in the silence, and I stare at the ceiling, and I try to close my eyes and remember something, _anything_.

I try, but I cannot remember Gregory standing in the sun from the stained glass; cannot hear him whispering my name that first evening in the barn, when he brushed my soft hair back from my young and fearless face, and placed his calloused hand around my waist beneath my shirt. When his breath had been warm and real against my skin, and his fingertips traced the lines of my stomach – my trembling chest.

I listen, and I cannot even hear my own voice, clear and light, the day that I pressed my cheek down against the smooth, warm stone, and wept tears of joy, and pledged myself to Him. 

Cannot feel any of the hundreds of ghosts of Gregory’s chaste kisses lining the fragile skin on the inside of my wrist. Cannot hear Sherlock Holmes whispering, “ _Mo ghille mear,_ ” kneeling before me in the empty chapel and dripping with rain. A wet dove in the dark, looking at me as a lighthouse in fog.

No . . . all is quiet as I wait out the long night. Just my heartbeat, and the rough cloth against my all too human skin, and the burning, the faintest tingling, of rosewater lips pressed against mine.

And now, as I hear the gentle stirrings of my Brothers preparing to file in to Lauds, I lie on my back, and I cannot decide whether I want it all to have been a dream.

I want to rise from my bed, and taste His Name upon my lips, and pull on black robes that are not damp from last night’s rain. I want to sing with all my soul within the brilliant chapel air, flinging my voice up towards the sky without guilt. I want to stand beside him, stand as always next to Holmes at dawn, and feel his sleeve against mine without any knowledge of his skin beneath.

And yet . . .

“ _My gallant darling. . .arise, and come with me . . ._ ”

And yet . . . I want to rise and flee up the stairs to his safe chambers. Want to press my cheek against his racing heart within his chest, and feel the leftover rainwater on his skin, and hear my name in his voice, chanted like a Blessed prayer bathed in Holy oils.

I want to whisper to him, “ _Place me as a seal over your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for my love is strong as death._ ”

I want . . . I _need_ to hold his face within my hands – to feel the undeniable bone of his strong jaw beneath my palms. Tell him, “ _The flashes of this love are flashes of fire. They are the very flame of the Lord. The very flames of her._ ”

I need to tell him that this memory of his lips upon mine is more terrifying than my red blood seeping onto the shore.

More gorgeous than the sunrise the next morning through the smoke.

I blink awake to the feeling of my feet against the floor, carrying me out towards the corridor beneath the moon. Somehow I’ve managed to clothe myself, and wash my face, and prepare for Lauds. Somehow I’ve managed to say my morning prayers beneath my breath.

I don my hood against the wind, fresh and dry in the rain-less dawn, and open my door just as Father Colmas is filing past. He halts, robes pooling around his ankles.

“Are you well, Watson?” he asks. It makes me sick to hear the unveiled concern in his voice – to know that they must have wondered about me, searched for me and called my name. 

To know that I had sinned in the very spot where they had prayed.

And yet, it also thrills me, burning like adventure within my core, to know that I have a body made of flesh beneath my robes. That I have not only kissed, but been kissed – been physically held through the roaring of the storm.

To know I have been seen without _that_ look in someone’s eyes.

My cane echoes against the stone. “Please forgive me for last night,” I whisper back to Father Colmas. “I was . . . besieged. I felt I had to remain alone with Christ.”

Father Colmas reaches out and holds my arm. His gaze is fierce. “You are steadfast, Watson. Your Faith is that of David.”

I nearly laugh in his face, caught off guard by his words. David, who sent Bathsheba’s husband to the frontline of battle just so that he could comfort her in his own bed, and deign to call her his own, and see her bare skin.

David, who condemned his soul to the restitution of death for his sins.

David, whose soul was knit with the soul of Jonathan, long ago. . .

“Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart,” Father Colmas is saying to me. “All ye who hope in the Lord.”

My arm twitches in his fingers, wanting to draw away. I feel like a young boy again, being praised by my father for working so hard at my chores.

My chores which I had done in the loft of the old barn, with Gregory’s breath in my ear, and his warm hands along my spine . . .

“I should not have missed Compline,” I say back.

He gives me _that_ look. “Child, you are forgiven.”

I cannot say anything back, and there’s a burning in my throat. We start walking down the silent corridor side by side, joining the slow procession of cloaks towards His house. It feels wildly unreal, a terrifying fantasy, that we are walking towards the place where, only a few hours ago, I had knelt, and called Brother Holmes by his given name, and begged him, “ _See me again_.”

Where I had kissed him. Where I had moaned as he kissed the collar at my throat.

Just before we enter the chapel, Father Colmas pulls me aside, shuffling under the soft light of dawn. The dead leaves hum. I can feel, like a blast of heat from the cool, black sky, when Holmes passes silently behind me, head bowed in prayer. And it takes all of my strength, all of my decades-long focus, not to whip around and draw him into my arms in that moment, and taste his breath. Not to say, “ _Praise God that you are real, that you are flesh and bone, my angel who has come to deliver me great tidings: that I have skin._ ”

“I had a visitor late last night,” Father Colmas finally says when we are alone. He gives me an odd look. “Were you aware that Brother Holmes had been out in the storm?”

My blood freezes. I pray for the stone beneath me to swallow me whole. “I was not,” I barely whisper.

“ _Speak. . .”_

_“I cannot. . .”_

_“Speak to me. . .”_

_“John. . ._ ”

Father Colmas nods solemnly. “He was in quite a state when he came to my rooms. Soaking wet – it’s a wonder he isn’t still shivering in his bed.”

I swallow thickly. “Praise be to Christ, he is alright.”

He looks distractedly over my shoulder. “Yes, praise be to Christ.”

I can feel the mood within the chapel doors growing restless waiting for our entry. Nobody is supposed to speak before Lauds, and my blood churns. I feel the list of my transgressions growing longer by the second, long enough that it will spill out across the moors, over the cliffs, out to the endless red sea.

Father Colmas follows my gaze to the propped-open chapel door, tracing one of the deep grains in the wood with his eyes. “Brother Holmes has expressed a need to travel to St. Ignatius’ for Confession," he says under his breath. "He explained to me last night that his walk in the storm was due to spiritual unrest.”

My mouth runs dry. “He told you this?” I abhor the jealousy that creeps into my voice.

Father Colmas appears not to have heard it. “Not in words, no,” he smiles sadly. “He wrote down a bit – and his eyes are quite expressive.”

Cool, grey eyes the colour of the sea. The colour of the waters of the Somme in the dawn. Eyes which had locked on to mine in the midst of the storm, which trailed across my skin like soft silk in my dreams. . .

“And you have granted him permission?” I ask. I’m desperate to fling myself inside. Anything to escape from the thought of Sherlock Holmes sitting in the dark of the confessional booth – of him crossing himself, and hunching over his thin spine, and speaking out loud, “ _Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. I have sinned with John Watson. . ._ ”

Father Colmas nods. “I’m wondering, Watson. . .” he trails off, and I wait, wanting to scream at him to let me sprint away.

But my cane won’t let me. 

“I’m wondering,” he starts again. “Brother Holmes’ demons appear to be many. You did not see him last night, as I did. You did not see his face. . .”

And oh, how my heart cries within my chest at the sound of those words. How I ache. How she sings to me, for the first time since I stepped out of the chapel last night, “ _Go to him, go to him, go to him, go. . ._ ”

A voice breaks me from my anguished thoughts: “I’m asking you, would you go with him?”

I blink hard, eyes focusing on Father Colmas’ face in the grey darkness. “To St. Ignatius’?”

“Yes. I believe he is in extra need of your guidance. And of a friend.”

“ _My darling. . . my beautiful one. . ._ ”

“Yes,” I say. My voice sounds bold. “Yes, of course. I will go with him.”

His eyes glance down at my thigh. "And your leg, you'll be able to --?"

I cut him off, ignoring the way my body is leaning on my cane, "I feel up for the walk, yes. It should do me good after the rain." 

Father Colmas looks relieved, as if he was afraid I would say no. He touches my arm once more. “You are doing Christ’s work,” he says. “I’ll have Father Harrows cover your afternoon lessons tomorrow afternoon. You should leave just after Mass – who knows what the journey on the paths will be like, since the storm.”

I hear my own voice as if from far away. “Yes, tomorrow. After Mass.”

And with that, and a soft look, Father Colmas pushes open the door of the chapel, creaking on its hinges and spilling candlelight out into the courtyard, fighting off the heavy dew of the night with fresh warmth.

I follow him on numb legs, struggling with myself not to shield my eyes from the pool of light. I keep my gaze fixed on her, guiding my steps towards her veil. For one flashing, painful second, my eyes roam to Christ on His cross, hanging there and suffering and bleeding because of my sin. Suffocating because I, Father Watson, sighed and felt the warmth of a human touch upon my cheek. Because I _felt_.

I tear my gaze away to look down at the floor, and open up my prayer book with trembling hands. The morning waits, unaware that this morning is unlike any other one in my life. It waits, and so I lick my dry lips, and I begin to sing. 

“Lord, open our lips,” my voice winds through the pews, rustling across feet on cold stone.

The chorus joins me, the same way they’ve done hundreds and hundreds of times, a warm wave caressing our ankles under thick, black robes. “And we shall praise Your Name.”

The oil burns in my throat and glows warmly on my tongue. I can almost feel it – my prayers. Almost feel the way they always used to surround me in awe, and leave me breathless at the sound of His Name, and give me wings.

Almost. . .

“Come, let us rejoice in the Lord; let us acclaim God our salvation.”

My Brothers’ voices surround me, racing with the light of the new day, thrumming through my bones and awakening my soul to her creation - her promise of life. And that is when I first notice, all in a rush, that the sleeve brushing against mine is not the sleeve from my dreams. It is just Father Ryland’s sleeve, scratchy and blunt.

I look up with a moan hovering in my throat, already wanting to flee out the doors and find him, search for him, seek out his –

I see his eyes, straight across from me, piercing into my soul. His prayer book is limp between his fingers, unopened. His fingers are still.

I want never to look back. I want the chapel walls around us to fall away into dust, and the incense to drift up into the heavens, and the stone to turn to grass, and the crosses around our necks to become permanently linked. I want to open my mouth and sing words to him – only to him:

“ _Like a lily among the thorns is my darling,_ ” I would sing to him. “ _Flowers appear on the earth, and the season of singing has come._ ”

But I cannot speak to him, because he is standing across from me – an uncrossable expanse between our forms. And his fingers aren’t tracing my words as I sing, and he has asked Father Colmas to journey away to receive Penance.

Penance because I touched him.

Sudden shame burns in my veins, clouding up my eyes. Lauds passes by me in a fog, so startlingly different from the crisp, clear way it used to burst across my skin. My heart races and thuds in my chest, ever changing. There is no quiet peace in the words flowing freely from my lips; no guidance from His calling, no _sanctus_ from her voice.

And when it ends, when the final “amen” has risen towards the rafters, I find my feet rooted to the ground like iron shackles. I grip my cane hard enough for my knuckles to turn white, and I try to fade into the stone walls as my Brothers pass me by. One, after the other, after the other they file out, emerging into the bright blast of new sunlight through the doors, leaving me in a cloud of smoke and darkness at her feet.

And I realize, when the very last cloak has slipped through the closing door, that there is one other sound in the chapel besides my own heart beating.

It is Sher – it is Holmes, his robes swishing in the breeze from the flowing air outside, standing directly across from me like marble, frozen in place.

The door shuts. For one moment, he and I are cloaked in darkness. Then slowly, ever so slowly, the candlelight licks over our skin, revealing his face in the flickering shadows. We stare at each other in the silence, and I fear I’ll die before I can move. I fear I’ll sink to my knees and beg him like a child for forgiveness. I fear I’ll turn and smash my way through the stained glass, away from his gaze. I fear I’ll turn towards the Virgin, expecting her to whisper, “ _fear not,_ ” but instead hear, “ _fear_.”

We do not move. His chest rises and falls like the waves beneath his robes, and one curl brushes across his forehead, perfect and soft. His gaze devours me, reading every wicked thought hovering in my mind. Stripping me bare and leaving me old and naked on the floor. The air burns in my lungs – flames across my tongue.

She is silent.

“Forgive me,” I finally manage to whisper, and my voice breaks, cracking, like a dead leaf crushed by the wind.

An emotion passes over his face, one too quick for me to catch, and then he is rushing towards me, reaching for me, and pulling me into his arms. In one breath I am caressed along my front by his warm body, flesh real and solid beneath his robes against my own. He holds me, pressing his racing heart against my tight chest. And then he sighs, resting his cheek in my hair, his steady hands on my spine.

“John,” he whispers.

It is the gasp Mary Magdelene gave when she saw that Christ had risen.

Tears overflow in my eyes. In a burst of movement my arms are clinging to him, pressing my chest against his body until I can barely breathe under the force. My cane clatters to the floor. “Thank God,” I choke out into his neck. “Thank God.”

His fingers stroke over my ear. “You thought it had all been a dream,” he whispers. His voice is wet. I cannot answer him, clinging to him, as if he is my mast in the storm. “You were afraid,” he says into my hair.

I try to swallow down the horrifying lump in my throat – the sheer terror that I had ruined him, reduced him to ashes by my mere touch.

And here he is, embracing me. Holding me in His house.

I pull back to look up at his face, glowing in the thick candlelight and shimmering under the sun’s dawn rays through the stained glass. I feel breathless.

“And you were not afraid?” I ask.

His eyes grow cold – the glints of steel that had emerged through the smoke and the mud, buried by the red mists of the Somme. My spine shivers.

“ _Snares. . . fire and brimstone. . . their blood will be upon them. . ._ ”

“Terrified,” he whispers. I feel my eyes grow wet along with his, and our chests rise and fall in perfect sync. A low sigh escapes my throat as he presses his lips to my forehead, breathing in the scent of my skin. “I needed to see you,” he says; he pleads.

The urgency in his voice makes me want to sink to my knees. To tell him that every minute in the night that passed by without rushing up to his chambers was an agony in my spirit, gnawing at me in my soul – thick, dead claws chaining me down to my cold bed. 

I want to tell him that I would walk back to the banks of the Somme in an instant, I would pick up my rock, and load my sling, and slay Goliath at his feet. I would run back into the smoke, fall once more into the mud, be cast into the belly of the storming sea like Jonah – I would do anything to smooth away the terror in his eyes, the knowledge that he desires to kneel in a stifling confessional, and bow his head and mutter, “ _Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. I have sinned because Father Watson touched me. . ._ ”

That I would walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and know that I would never again hear her voice sing, “ _Fear no evil._ ”

That I would ruin my own soul – cast the soul of David into the fire – if it meant that the soul of Jonathan would remain safe, among the lilies.

But Sherlock doesn’t let me say any of these things. He holds my cheek within his palm, and presses his lips into my hair. “John,” he breathes, calling me back to myself. “Cast all your anxieties upon her, because she cares for you, she hears you.”

“Yes,” I whisper against his neck, wrenching it from my chest. “Sherlock –”

Footsteps clatter outside the door, shattering the soft silence. Like a flash of lightning I tear myself away from his body, grunting as he flings me into the cold air out of his arms.

Voices through the door: “. . . . see either of them inside. . .”

My vision goes grey, hazy like it did at the first spark of gunfire all those years ago through the fog. I stare across at Sherlock, see his eyes locked onto mine with the same fear. His lips are slightly parted, still wet from the kiss they had pressed into my hair, against my skin . . .

The door shoves open, bursting through the calm air within the chapel, bathing the Virgin with white sunlight so fierce it hurts to look at the marble.

“Oh, thank goodness. You’re still in here,” Father Woodley is saying to me. I go to speak, but then his eyes widen and he glances to my right. “As is Brother Holmes,” he says to Brother Thomas, appearing at his side.

Brother Thomas frowns. “We were worried when we didn’t see either of you at breakfast. . .”

My tongue rests heavily against my teeth like tar, thick and sharp. “I was informing Brother Holmes of tomorrow’s plans,” I hear myself saying. My chest heaves, and I pray it isn’t too visible under my robes. “Father Colmas has given him permission to walk to St. Ignatius’, and I shall accompany him.”

I wonder if I imagine it when Sherlock’s muscles relax to my right after hearing my words. If I really do feel the air around him soften, leaving his lean muscles less tense.

Father Woodley looks relieved, as if I’m taking a heavy burden upon myself and off them all. “Ah yes, of course, of course,” he says. “We should not have worried. Only after last night, and when we couldn’t find you. . .”

For a flash I think he is referring to wet cloaks pressed together, and warm lips against my mouth, and lightning illuminating pale skin.

Then I realize, with an aching shame deep in my breast, that Father Woodley is instead referring to four years ago. When a similar storm had raged along the coast, and my dreams had convinced me that I was awake, and I had wandered, half-clothed, across the dark and thunderous moors. When the bullet wound in my thigh had caused my leg to finally collapse, and an old ordinand, Brother Keats, had found me just before the dawn, crumbled and lying on my side alone in the hills, feverishly murmuring for Dòmhnall to save himself.

My throat burns at the memory. Father Woodley is giving me _that_ look - _don’t worry, Father Watson, we know that you think the War is still real in your dreams. We were expecting to find you last night out on the moors, soaked with rain, too weak to return. . ._ \- and my eyes plead with him not to say any of the details out loud.

I feel Sherlock looking at my face, trying to read what’s going on, and the thought of him knowing this, my shameful secret of this weakness, fills me with such dread I nearly beg them all to stay silent out loud.

Father Woodley closes his lips. 

“Yes,” I finally say, breaking the silence with a crack. “Forgive me for last night. For causing you all distress. I was –”

“There is no need to ask forgiveness, Father Watson,” Brother Thomas cuts in. He’s smiling gently. “We were simply worried. We’re glad you’re alright.” His gaze cuts quickly to Sherlock, still bathed in shadow. “That you’re both alright.”

Sherlock simply looks down at the floor.

I clear my throat. “Well, we shall join you in a moment for breakfast before prayers,” I say. They both nod, not looking at Sherlock, and slip backwards out the door, shutting it behind them with a groan that echoes through my bones.

I am afraid to look back at him. To look at him and know that he is going to ask what Father Woodley meant – want to know why he was looking at me like a little bird, lost and wet.

Instead he approaches me, reaching out as if to touch my arm before halting his hand. “You’ll go with me? To St. Ignatius’?” he asks.

Somehow, it still shocks me that I am hearing him speak, that I get to hear the secret of his voice. The hope in his words makes my breath hitch. When I look up at him, his eyes are sparkling – the baptismal waters Christ arose from in the wilderness, with John the Baptist awestruck at His side.

“Yes,” I whisper. His palm settles on my forearm, and I cover it with my own hand. My lips tremble. “What will you Confess?” I ask him, gut churning at what he’ll answer.

His thumb strokes my skin through the fabric of my cassock. “I don’t know,” he says back, and I hear the raw honesty in his words. His eyes look lost, roving across my face to find a spot on which to land. “But you’ll be with me,” he adds.

I blink hard, pressing his palm more firmly against my skin. “I will be with you,” I whisper, just loud enough that I know she will also hear.

I step towards him, feeling bold. “Though thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the mighty rivers, they shall not overflow thee.”

He takes my hand in his, and holds the back of it up to his cheek. His eyes close, and I wonder what his lashes would feel like against my lips.

His voice is the beauty of her silk veil – the fragrance of Lebanon. “When though walkest through fire, thou shalt not be burned,” he says back to me. “Neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For behold, I am with thee.”

“I am with thee,” I whisper to him again.

He keeps his eyes closed, and presses the back of my hand to his lips. His kiss shivers up my forearm and drips down my spine. For one wild moment, I think that I’ll run my fingers through his curls, and beg him to press his kisses up my wrist, up my forearm. Beg him to drag his soft, wet mouth towards my shoulder and my neck, reminding me that I have human skin beneath my cassock. Reminding me that the touch of her hands upon my shoulders is not the only thing I’ll ever feel.

He kisses my hand again, and it echoes through the chapel, mimicking the kiss I watched him place upon her moonlit feet. 

All at once, her voice surrounds me, tingling against my fingertips and weaving through my hair. “ _Thy lips, O my bride, drop sweetness as the honeycomb. Milk and honey are under thy tongue,_ ” she whispers. 

We sigh together, he and I, and the sound of it is the calm waves lapping at the cliffs, bathing the wildflowers with cool water to drink. Then I pull my hand away, aching, and he lets me, eyes soft.

She is at my nape, “ _The fragrance of thy garments is the fragrance of Lebanon._ ”

I startle when I feel my cane being pressed into my fingers. He wraps my hand around the wood, holding me firmly between his palms. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says, and I ache deeply in my chest when I realize what he means.

That I will see him today at Mass, and at Vespers, and at Compline. I will see him by my right side when I teach, and when I pray. And yet, I will not _see_ him until tomorrow – until we are alone.

“I am with thee,” I whisper back, clutching our hands between us. “Even now, I am with thee.”

He nods with heavy lidded eyes, and then I pull my hands away, his fingertips clinging to mine until the last moment. I force myself to put one foot in front of the other to walk towards the door away from his body. Wrench my gaze away from the sight of him framed by the white of her marble robes.

And when I have somehow made it through the corridors and courtyards, once I have sat down on numb legs at a rough wooden bench, and been poured a cup of tea, I stare down at my hands, and I do not eat a single bite of my breakfast. I cannot. For there is still honey and rosewater in my mouth, covering my lips, and I know my bowl of porridge and weak tea would destroy it forever, and turn it to ash.

And if my lips are made of ash, there will be no one to say his name, and no one to kiss him with the kisses of his mouth.

No one to tell him, “I am with thee. Though thou passest through fire, I am with thee.”

 

\--

 

_26th October 1927_

He meets me at the gates.

I practically run towards him in the morning light, fleeing from the dark walls at my back and the choked air. He waits for me, soft curls blowing in the breeze, and his long limbs swallowed up with inky black. The sight of him turns the vast green moors into grey – everything dimmed when compared to the brilliance of his throat, or the gold of his thin wrists, or the opals in his eyes.

I run to him – only I am not running, not really. In reality I am trudging along, dragging myself over the uneven stone paths, embarrassed at the ragged pants of breath in my anxious lungs. I stand next to him when I finally approach, far too close and bathed in his heat, and I feel his breath dance across the side of my forehead before he turns his shoulders towards the vast, open moors, wordlessly beckoning us on.

I follow him. 

Every step we take away from St. Sebastian’s feels like dark clouds being swept clear of the suffocating horizon. Feels like angels being set free, and fields of blossoms blooming, and sea birds pointing their lungs towards the sky, worshipping Him in a way far more beautiful than voices in the dark. 

It is everything that I had felt walking towards St. Sebastian’s nine years ago, when I had stood alone on the rise of a hill, and gazed down at the stone, and wept – wept that the green, velvet moors were not drenched with black and red, and that the smooth, high walls were safe and cradled by the sea, and that the humming wind drowned out the sounds of the bombs in my mind. When I had rushed towards the walls with outstretched palms, and a lightness in my chest, and when I knew, within that chapel with stained glass spilling through the fog, that He was waiting for me, calling me to Him, waiting to hold me close.

“ _Deliver me from my enemies, O my God,_ ” I had called out to Him, pleading as I floated down the hillside towards the walls, rushing towards them as if they would vanish into the mist if I didn’t reach the sanctum fast enough. “ _Set me securely on high away from those who rise up against me._ ”

But now, with Sherlock Holmes’ sleeve brushing against mine as we walk, I want to turn and say those same words to him over the rush of the waves. I want to tell him that the memory of my lips against his mouth terrifies me. That it brings me to my knees at night and aches with Holy fire. And even though I fear that reaching out and touching him will turn his skin to ash, I still want to tell him that just now, walking towards him waiting for me at the gates, I felt at home.

Home – my _own_ home, not His House, or hers. Home which I have not felt since I reached up and plucked a piece of straw from Gregory’s hair, and leaned forward and pressed my lips to his cheek. The only time I had ever touched him, instead of him touching me.

But I feel it now, as my lungs beat in time to Sherlock’s breathing – and his name, _Sherlock_ \- flows effortlessly through my mind. 

The seabirds sing, and the grasses whisper, surrounding me with their song. “You are deep in thought,” he finally says, breaking the calm silence between us.

I watch my feet and cane press into the fresh grass again and again as we walk. “I was thinking of when I first arrived here,” I say, slightly panting. My voice dances on the wind. “It seemed such a refuge. The calm and the silence. Searching as far as the eye could see and seeing nobody – no movement on the horizon.”

I feel him looking at me beneath his curls, walking by my side with his arms behind his back. He glances at my fingers, knuckles white from gripping my cane. “But it is a refuge no longer,” he says, not a question.

I cannot answer. His words make the wind sweeping across the moors sound like a mournful wail, like the saddest longing – only longing for what, I do not know. I look back over my shoulder, gazing at the grey towers of stone piercing the sky off in the distance, steadfast under the battering of the spray from the sea. And I think, as I look upon it, that whoever inhabits such a place must be the loneliest soul on earth – lonelier than Christ during his forty days and nights alone in the desert. Lonelier than Adam before God created Eve. 

And it startles me that my soul is not bolstered by the fact that whoever lives in this place is living in the House of the Lord God.

And it feels unreal that that lonely soul I am imagining is me.

There is a hand upon my cheek, blocking my skin from the wind. I startle, glancing around to make sure no one has seen.

“We are alone,” he whispers. And somehow, when he says that we are alone in the middle of the moors, it fills my heart with warm fire – the comfort of Boaz waking at dawn to find Ruth sleeping at his feet. The promise of, “ _I am with thee_.”

And I think that, when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death – when the blood upon my hands drowns my lungs – even then, I will fear no evil in my soul, if only I am alone with him.

I let my face turn into his touch, drawing in the heat from his palm to warm my cheek, numbed and stinging from the wind. His thumb traces across my chapped lower lip, tingling the skin, and his eyes stare into mine unblinking.

“Would that I could take your past upon myself,” he whispers in a low voice. “That I could bear the burden of your nightmares. Your demons.”

I feel my breath warming the palm of his hand with moisture as I sigh. I wince. “You would never deserve that,” I say back, voice pained.

Because it is unthinkable, unholy in the extreme, that this beacon of a man should wish to be dimmed by the gnarled claws and gunsmoke that cloud the corners of my mind – the screams that echo in the rafters of His chapel, and the cold stone that sits at the center of my soul, and the wickedness in my dreams which paint his lips with fresh oils, and drip his eyelashes with rosewater, and turn his Holy, praising mouth into nothing but a vessel of wet warmth upon my neck, around my fingers, between my thighs . . .

His eyes are sad, reading my thoughts effortlessly across my face, though I try to hide them. He leans forward, and my heart grows mad, wildly thinking that Sherlock will dip his head towards my own, and rest his nose along mine, and brush his lips against my own mouth, under the heavens, in view of the sun.

Instead he draws his hand from my cheek, taking a step backwards in the grass while the wind whips through his curls. I swallow hard in shame, thinking that I’ve scared him away from myself – revealed too much hidden blackness within me for him to want to physically touch.

But he holds out his hand, palm upwards, fingers steady and waiting for my own to take hold. “Neither do you deserve it,” he says softly. “Come.”

I reach out and take his hand without hesitation. And as my hand settles into his palm, the pulse of his heartbeat through his fingertips, she reminds me in the barest whisper, “ _Have I not commanded you – fear not._ ”

He leads me along an untrod path away from the call of the sea towards St. Ignatius’. I follow in his soft tread, barely needing my cane, and it thrills me, rubbing up my spine and along my nape, that all the seabirds and the heavens above can see my hand resting in his. Can see the both of us – two black specks billowing across the moors, connected by the bare skin of our hands, unseparated by cloth.

We walk in silence, wholly unconcerned for any other living thing, not even the sparrows that hide within the grass, or the angels enshrouded by the wisps of white clouds. It is a selfishness I’ve never before allowed myself – never even conceived. It takes hold of my shoulders with bold, rocky hands and flings my consciousness away from His Word, and her voice, and the voices of the Brothers we’ve left behind at our backs.

But then, like the claws of a beast ascending out of the belly of the earth, ripping apart the unbroken stretch of sky and tugging my mind down from the clouds, the stone walls of St. Ignatius’ come into view over the crest of one of the rolling green hills in the distance.

The breath shutters out of Sherlock’s chest in a shiver, and suddenly the breeze whipping against my face feels threatening rather than free. We keep walking, slowing our pace, until the full building rises above the moors, and his hand slips soundlessly from mine. My fingers twitch in the empty, cold air left behind – the absence of his touch leaving me gasping and stranded in a way I haven’t felt since I walked away from Gregory’s shadow beneath the green boughs.

Minutes pass. He doesn’t move. 

I try to stand strong beside him, gripping my cane and waiting for him to take another step towards the Confessional that awaits him within the stone walls – the same Confessional I had knelt in just a few weeks ago, wrecked and nauseated with shame in my throat. Unable to tell Father Morey that it was _he_ of whom I dreamt. _He_ who threatened to topple my faith, and not _she_.

The wind whispers, silken waves of air upon my cheeks, stinging my eyes.

“John,” he finally says. I startle, looking over to him after hearing the agony in his voice - the sheen of emotion.

His jaw is clenched, pale grey eyes drinking in the sight of St. Ignatius’ like the Israelites gazing upon the Promised Land, but being unable to enter.

Like Christ himself viewing his splintered cross for the first time, being told to carry it upon the open sores across his back.

I ache to take his hand, but clench my fingers instead within my thick robes. He looks at me, untamed fear flickering in his eyes. Our lips are parted with unsaid words. The wind whips my cassock against my shins, reminding me that I still have solid skin beneath.

“I . . .” he starts. He swallows hard, a gentle arc moving along his pale, bare neck. “I do not wish to Confess,” he finally whispers, voice blending in with the gentle roar of the wind.

And I know that I should tell him that he _should_ Confess, that he should take heart in the Lord, and draw on His strength, and march into the doors of St. Ignatius’ with his head held high and repentance in his breast. And I know that I should say, “Fear not,” and lead the way down the winding path without any hesitation in my step.

I should smile at him, with my hands clasped behind my back, and say, “My child, confess your sins, for He is faithful, and He is just. He will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” 

I should tell him that she will hear him, taking his cares upon her wings.

And yet, my heart soars at his words - _I do not wish to Confess_ \- and her hands flutter like petals upon my shoulders. I surround his hand with both of mine – the sturdy, thin bones. “Then do not Confess it,” I tell him; I beg him. 

His eyes widen, and I squeeze his hand once more before letting my fingers fall away. I look around wildly, suddenly wanting to be hidden away from all the world – to discover a secret place where it is only he and I, where not even His eyes reach, and where the only air comes from our exhaled breaths, and where only her soft whispers echo in the space between our bodies, leaving nothing to keep me apart from his skin. 

“Take me away with you,” I say, boldness flowing across my robes. My own words stun me, pouring from my mouth before I can understand why, before I can pinpoint what it even is I’m asking him to take me away from, and where to, and why His words have such a new meaning when I’ve just held Sherlock Holmes’ fingers in my own.

I am as far away from everything as I have ever been – far away from the bombs, and from death, and from Confessionals, and from the memory of Gregory’s hands. Far away from looks of pity in candlelit halls, and the choke of incense, and the eyes of my fellow priests resting too long on my thigh.

And still, here alone in the middle of the moors, still I beg him to take me away. Far away.

The earth quivers, and Sherlock’s eyelashes flutter in the breeze. “Let us hurry, take me away with you,” I tell him again, clutching my cane and pretending that the rough, worn wood is really the warm skin of his palm. I fight with myself not to reach out and pull him towards my body, away from the church walls waiting patiently for him to arrive.

He draws in a breath, eyes widening, and then he leans forward, pressing the top of his chest against my own. I stop breathing. His fingertips alight on my stomach, the stretches of my ribs covering my lungs beneath layers of cloth. His warmth bleeds through, tiny sparks of flame against my body. I stare into his wide eyes, transfixed, before he closes them, bringing his face so close to mine that my entire world becomes just his smooth skin. The freckle at the corner of his mouth. 

He drags his nose gently across my forehead, brushing through my hair. He whispers into my skin, holding me against him, “Thus I have become in his eyes like one bringing contentment.”

I shiver, even under the bright rays of the sun. “Please,” I say, not even knowing why. “Please.”

And then, he is pulling away, and his firm hand is leading me forward, and we are striding, faster than I’ve ever walked in years, in decades, floating as the long grasses cling to the bottoms of our robes. I leave my hand in his, feeling the pull of his fingers as strongly as the cord in my breast that pulled me to his side in the storm, that bade me look up from my Mass to see his eyes.

We stray back towards the sea, far from the inland roads that had led us to St. Ignatius’, closer and closer to the small ruins that dot the abandoned hamlets along the edges of the shore, skirting the grasses and the foam, caressed by cliffs.

He leads me down among the ruins – crumbling half-walls of rock and stone covered in moss, blanketed with wildflowers waving in the breeze, bared and unhidden beneath the wide blue sky. And we are alone, and yet, I have never felt so little alone in my entire life, even in the moment His voice covered me when I awoke to the sunrise on the Somme. Even in the moment I first heard His voice clear as day in my ears.

Even when I first entered into the brimming chapel of St. Sebastian’s, surrounded by smiling Brothers and overwhelmed by the hum of His prayers.

And I want to smile as we pass through the cradled little valleys, farther and farther from every place I’ve ever known. I want to fill my lungs with the sharp sea air, and laugh towards the sky, and bade him tell me every bird, and every flower, and every rock, because something in the way his fingertips alight on everything we pass tells me he knows its very essence, its every name and the way it breathes.

I want to drown in the looks on his face when he turns around to smile, as we weave our way through the hidden earth, the secret moors. I want to keep stride with his long legs devouring the earth, and follow him to the edges of the sea, and never look back, and never cease --

But my leg screams.

I stumble hard, just as we pass what used to be a small chapel, perched on a bluff by the sea and dripping with grasses, half its wooden slat roof blown away by wind and stained-glass littering the dew. The earth tilts beneath me, pulling at my limbs.

“Sherlock,” I call out as I start to sink into the grass. My face burns with shame as he whips around. He lunges to grab hold of my arms and keep me from falling, gripping me with a hidden strength. I grunt over the pain shooting fire up my thigh, clinging to him just to try and stand on my own two feet. I look up into his eyes, already feeling sick at the pity I know I’ll find there. But when I do meet his gaze, I suck in a breath and freeze.

Sherlock looks furious, deep fire burning in his eyes, and I barely have time to try to ask why before he leans down and kisses me on the mouth, bruising my lips, while his arms wrap around my shoulders and chest and hold me up from the ground.

I moan. The fire in my leg completely forgotten as his breath moves like fire into my lungs, and the wetness from his lips covers my own, blowing icy sharp in the cold wind. In less than a moment, I feel my skin come alive, prickling with sensation under the wool of my robes and shivering to remind me that I am living – that I can feel. 

My bones tremble, rushing me closer to his body like a desperate man dying of thirst – like the bleeding woman jostled in the heaving crowd, who hurled herself out into the dusty road just to touch Jesus’ robes, just to be healed.

He sighs against my lips, gasping for breath in the shared warm space of our mouths, the candle on a hill that cannot be snuffed out.

And then I remember that we are standing under the clear open sky. And that I am wearing my priest’s robes, in view of all the earth, with my mouth on an ordinand’s lips – a _man’s_ lips.

I pull back quickly, and he lets me, swiping his palm over my cheek just once before running his hand down the small of my back. His eyes are guarded, restlessly roving over everything in the landscape except my own face. My lips sting as the cold wind bites against the moisture left over on my mouth from his kiss, refusing to let me forget that his lips were just pressed against mine, and the silence of the earth is the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever heard – free from voices or singing or prayers. Free from screams, the hum of swishing robes, or the crackling of candles in the light before dawn.

He doesn’t look at me. “We should sit. This is hurting you to walk like this. . I should have realized –”

“Sherlock –”

“We’ll sit down.”

His hand falls away from my back, leaving my skin there feeling empty and cold, and he walks to an open patch of dry grass overlooking the sea far below, sheltered on the sides by the ruins of the chapel, with sunlight slanting through the crumbling wooden beams upon his face, and wildflowers forming a bed around his black ordinands’ robes.

I wince as I move to follow and sit beside him, holding in a desperate gasp at the pain, and yet grateful when Sherlock lets me sit down unaided. At once pained in my chest and also flying with relief when he doesn’t even offer to help me down, or hold out a hand.

He waits until I’ve settled beside him in the grass, stretching out my thigh with a quiet groan and resting my cane on the ground. I feel as if I am worlds and universes away from the four walls of my chambers at St. Sebastian’s – somehow transported to an earth where no churches exist, and no sanctums, and no other lips breathe out any prayers.

No sky full of angels watching me slowly shift in the grass to be closer to his warmth.

Sherlock breathes harshly through his nose, gazing out at the rolling hills dotted with ruins as they fall down into the sea.

“I’m sorry,” he says in a rush. “I was rash to do that, to touch you without thinking, making you walk all this way –”

I quickly cover his hand with my own where it rests between us in the grass, stopping the words on his lips. I leave my palm over his fingers.

“You should not apologize for having to slow down for an injured old man,” I say, the words burning my tongue as I say them.

To my surprise, he chuckles. “You’re decades younger than almost every other priest I’ve seen. Hardly an old man.”

There’s a punch of tension in my chest. “In age, yes. But in spirit . . .,” I hold in a sigh. “I’ve felt old for a very long time.”

Sherlock hums. “Eleven years.”

I startle, looking over at him still gazing out at the waves. I lick my lips, wanting to ask how in the world he even knows, but instead I start to move my hand away from his and simply say, “Yes.”

His fingers catch mine, holding me tightly in their grasp. We sit, breathing in the sharp sea air and the pollen of the flowers, shielded from the wind by the ruins surrounding us and buffered from the sun by the crumbling roof above our heads. The buttons of my cassock strain against my chest as I breathe. As I try to taste the perfume of the fresh air upon my tongue. 

Words echo in my mind, as I let my hand remain within the warmth of Sherlock’s fingers. Words I first heard when I was very, very small, in a similar chapel to the one at our backs, hidden in the endless farmland and cut off from the rest of the world.

 _If the Lord delight in us,_ ” the priest had said, speaking the Words from heart without even a book in his hands, “ _then He will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey._ ”

And we all licked our lips as hungry children, hands stained from the mud of the earth, calloused palms, and we whispered among us what this Promised land must be, and whether we would live to see it, and if the milk and honey bubbled up from the ground or rained from the sky – if it would get our fingers sticky when we ran through the fields, and if the milk would flow and flow until our bellies were finally full, until everything was covered in creamy white and gold.

And I smile sadly now, filled with sudden loss, as I realize that this Promised land is right here, before my very eyes. That I’ve made it, gazing out at the secret moors with Sherlock Holmes by my side, the ghost of his hungry kiss still wet against my lips.

I’ve made it, and yet the chapel at our backs is crumbling and lost – the wooden cross fallen to the ground decades ago, and the stained glass littering the dew like broken jewels. I cannot hear His trumpets blaring my arrival, nor do I feel called to sink to my knees and pray in thanks. 

No, I just want to sit, and lean against the human form beside my own, and gaze and gaze until the milk and honey start to froth over in the sea, and cover the fields of wildflowers and rocks, and pour from my lips to mix with the leftover taste of his mouth.

Sherlock’s eyes flicker to my face. “I was not going to Confess our kiss,” he says suddenly, bringing my mind crashing down to earth, leaving the Promised land far away up in the clouds.

I look at him, those two small words - _our kiss_ \- hovering in the air between our mouths, still tinged with sparks, pouring down my throat like the milk and honey and begging me to not convince myself that this is all a dream.

“ _Fear not –”_

 _“Their blood will be upon them. Their blood will be upon their hands –_ ”

“What would you have Confessed?” I ask. My voice sounds weak and small.

His hand tightens around mine, not letting me pull away. His grey eyes fade into the sky caressing the moors. “I have broken my Vow,” he says. He looks down at our joined hands. “Many times.”

Fear grips me, and suddenly I want to beg him on my knees. To clutch his robes, say, “ _Don’t lock your voice away again. Please. Let me hear it, still speak to me, only for me. It cannot be a sin still to call me my name . . ._ ” 

Because his face looks pained, twisting with sharp fear, and the failure in his mind covers his eyes with black clouds, weighing down the muscles of his spine, sagging his shoulders. 

And I want to ask him, burning with want in my veins, why he took such a Vow, and who bade him silence himself, and what Penance he is paying by keeping his mouth sealed closed, even for Him.

But before I can open my mouth to ask one million things, Sherlock speaks. “You and I have met before,” he says, voice steady.

The earth freezes before my very eyes. My chest lurches. “How –-?”

“Ten years ago, when you’d just come back from the War. You were invited to give Mass in a little church outside Carlisle,” he says, words rolling off his tongue like they aren’t more incredible, more revolutionary to my existence than the words, “ _In the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth.”_

The memory slams into me like a wave across my face, throwing me back in time to the morning that I limped up the center aisle of the small wooden church, the still healing bullet wound like fire in my thigh. When I had kept my eyes at my feet as the white robes hung off my thin form, and as I tried to remain standing, hoping and begging and praying in my mind as I gave the weak Mass that I would be chosen to remain there as their priest – that I could finally have rest, and silence, and a steady place to sleep.

But they hadn’t wanted a new priest who would wake the entire village in the middle of the night with blood curdling screams. And so I had smiled, and shaken hands with every curious member of the small congregation, before slinging my bag over my tired shoulder and limping back to the road. And the next week I had answered a letter from a seminary far away on the Welsh coast, struggling and desperate for a new priest to come in and teach church history – so isolated that no laymen could ever hear the new priest scream.

Sherlock takes a deep breath beside me, practicing the words on his lips before speaking. “I was there,” he finally says. “I . . . I was training at that church at the time, as an altar boy. I saw you deliver your Mass.”

My mind whirs, sprinting through the memories of my past and searching, desperately peering through the gunsmoke to seek out a hidden memory of pale eyes in an old church – of a head of dark curls bowing over the incense, or thin fingers reaching out to ring the altar bell.

But I had been a shell of a man delivering that Mass, and all I remember is looking down at the tops of my feet, and feeling that only the strength of His hands was keeping me standing, and hearing her whisper the correct words to me so I wouldn’t forget my lines, lost in the bombs that still echoed freely in my mind.

I swallow hard. “I do not remember you,” I say, and my voice is strained with loss.

He squeezes my fingers. “I wouldn’t expect you to. You were the young soldier, the war hero just back from France, while I was a child in the corner too tall for my robes and trying to sneak in some reading during your Mass.”

I chuckle at the mental image despite myself, still swallowing down shame that I was in the same room, sharing the same breath with Sherlock Holmes and didn’t even know, didn’t _realize_. . .

“I came up to receive Communion from you,” Sherlock goes on. He clears his throat and leans forward, wrapping his long arms around his drawn-up knees.

I stare at him, unashamed. He suddenly looks so young, tucking his chin over his legs while he gazes out to sea – a student admitting his deepest memory for his teacher, for me.

But then I remember standing before him in the storm with his arms around my shoulders, her voice gasping over the waves. How I had felt the Trinity descend upon our souls, linking the two, and how I had never felt more human than in that moment in his arms, never more of living, breathing _man_ than when stripped before him, even when my leg had been shattered by a bullet, leaving my lungs to leak oxygen into the red mud.

I reach out and place my hand upon his knee. “Go on.”

His leg leans into my touch. “I knelt for you and received the Body of Christ. You . . . your cane must have slipped. You leaned forward into me – your fingers brushed against my tongue and lips. And you apologized and stepped back. Went on to the next person like nothing happened, but I . . . I could taste your fingers.” He licks his lips. “It. . . stirred me.”

I stop breathing, hand frozen on his leg. Like a ghost, I see myself from ten years ago walking towards us in the grass. I am trembling and weak, too thin for my clothes, with glazed-over eyes empty of anything but smoke, and tremors in my hands, and washed-out skin, and a cane that looks like it should belong to an old and dying man, not a soldier barely even old enough to be considered a man himself. And this haunted thing, my past self, somehow caught the attention of the man shining like sunlight beside me. My fingers tingle with awe.

“I cannot believe it,” I whisper.

He smiles sadly. “Nor could I. I felt tested for weeks, trying to get back to the way I had been before.” He clenches his jaw in frustration. “Nothing made sense; everything I thought was true had to be called into question, to be re-analyzed, re-observed under this new data. Scripture needed to be reinterpreted, teachings re-organized, everything re-examined.”

My heart aches at his frustration, evident in the way his fingers twist in his curls, pulling gently at his scalp. I lift my hand from his leg, palm cold at the loss of touch.

“I’m sorry,” I start to whisper. “I didn’t mean to cause you pain.”

He looks up at me, eyes fierce and curls frizzed in the wind. “You were the one in pain, not I,” he says holding my gaze. We stare at each other, seconds passing while my heart beats in tune to his.

He looks away again. “Anyway, I was successful. I dove into my reading, worked everything back out, from the ground up.” His voice swells with pride as he talks, words rushing from his mouth so fast I can barely keep up, swept up in the blaze. I’ve never seen him like this – so brimming with life, a burning fire roaring in his eyes while his fingers dance in the air.

“I came back to His Word – the great puzzle – and solved all of it. Laid every brick of my own faith into a new foundation, stretching heavenward. Read every line and text, every detail until everything made sense.”

I let out a breath I haven’t realized I’ve been holding. “Incredible –”

“And then I found out I could apply to a seminary.” He looks at me, eyes wide. “Imagine, John. A whole church, a whole _life_ built around learning, around reading His Word. To escape from the farms and the factories and just pray, just _read_.”

And suddenly I remember the words from Father Ryland just days before – “ _Poverty. . . nine children . . . stolen to teach himself to read. . . once the family gave him up. . .”_ \-- and hot water prickles in the corners of my eyes.

“But Sherlock,” I say softly. “You have achieved all of this and more. How could you . . . why did you need to receive such Penance –”

“I didn’t know you were a priest here when I sent in my letters to be admitted,” he interrupts, and realization dawns in my chest like a cold drum. He goes on, “I did some research before I came, trying to look up who would be here – from whom I would be learning.” The moment grows quiet, nearly drowned in the sound of the soft wind. “I recognized your name instantly on the list of priests –”

“My name isn’t unique –”

“—and asked around if Father Watson had been a chaplain in the War. Everyone I asked immediately said yes.”

I swallow hard, lost for words, and wait for him to go on. The soft grass beneath me suddenly feels too soft, too unstable, as if the wildflowers will swallow my body whole, dragging me away from my precious view of the Promised land, away from the warmth of Sherlock’s robes into the cold hard center of the earth.

“I thought it was a punishment for the thoughts I had battled with before,” he says softly, eyes staring unseeing out at the sea. “Everything came back once I knew that I would see you here again – all of my doubts and confusion. All of my . . . unrest. I couldn’t sleep.”

My throat clenches. “So you Confessed,” I say, understanding, after Sherlock goes quiet.

He nods. “The Priest I Confessed to before coming here was troubled at my state. It was he who suggested the Vow – a way to quiet my mind and keep my focus on His plan.”

“And has it?” I hear myself asking. “Quieted your mind?”

His eyes are lost and grey. He folds his fingers before his lips. “No, John,” he whispers. “It has not.”

I cannot look away from the profile of his face. “Did he know?” I ask, surprised at the question coming out of my own mouth. “Did he understand that your unrest came from me? From . . . a priest – a man?”

And this time, when Sherlock turns to look at me, there is a wet sheen over his eyes, and something else – a low want burning in his irises, a sudden longing, filled with loss, as his eyes flicker down to my lips.

“He did not,” he answers breathlessly, a strange hope flickering on his face.

I move before I can convince myself not to. I lean forward towards his mouth as a gasp escapes his throat, and I allow myself to capture his top lip with both of mine. I hold him gently in the trembling space of our held breaths. I taste him, humming softly along my tongue before sliding my mouth across his open lips, barely brushing my skin along his chin towards his jaw.

He sighs shakily when I pull back. He’s frozen in place, full lips still parted, and I watch transfixed as his eyes slowly flutter open, blinking to get used to the clear sun.

We stare at each other.

“ _My dove in the clefts of the rock,_ ” she sings in a soft voice into my ear, warm at my nape. “ _In the hiding places on the mountainside. Show me your face, let me hear your voice._ ”

His eyes are soft. “Where is it?” he asks me.

I frown. “Where is what?”

His voice does not falter. “Your scar.”

My muscles tense, and I wait for the panic to flood like ice through my veins, to choke out the sky.

“ _Let me hear your voice,”_ she continues to whisper. “ _For your voice is sweet, and your face is so lovely._ ”

The sky remains clear. Without speaking, I place my palm down on the upper stretch of my right thigh, directly over the place where my skin is torn and raised, still gnarled and pink from the bullet all those years ago.

And then, like Christ reaching out to touch and heal the leper, I feel Sherlock’s warm palm rest atop my hand. His fingers stroke mine, gently tracing the rough bones, and then his hand slowly slides underneath my own, pressing directly against my thigh through my cassock.

He rubs gently over my leg, sending warmth into my belly, fluttering at my hips. I look down and watch his pale fingers stroke along the black cloth, feeling the raised skin of my scar beneath and yet not pulling away, not flinching back in disgust.

His huge palm wraps around my thigh, caressing the muscle as he presses even deeper, massaging into the skin. I sigh deep in my chest as my thigh relaxes under his touch, gradually easing the ache that had settled into the bone.

I close my eyes against the sight, suddenly overcome with sharp emotion at the thought – that here, in the Promised land, Sherlock Holmes is touching the leftover bombs blasted into my skin. That I might have gone my whole life never realizing we had once met. That his eyes - like the first droplets of water created by His hands – are riveted to my face instead of the treasure of Creation before us. 

I can’t find the words within me to tell him that he is the first person to touch my body in that place since the surgeons wielded their scalpels against the open, bleeding skin. Since the nurses in the field hospital quickly worked thick ointment over the scabs before moving on to the next moaning body on a thin cot.

I want to tell him that his palm upon my thigh is more miraculous than Christ turning the water into wine. More unworthy than the souls of sinners being paid for on His cross.

I feel his warm breath on my neck, and then his lips speak against my jaw. “Oh Lord,” Sherlock whispers into my cheek, “Thou hast searched me and known me.”

A strange relief pours down my throat, calming the uncertainty that had been tight in my gut. I turn towards his face, pressing my cheek into his lips. The entire world is Sherlock’s firm palm upon my thigh, his breath brushing my skin. “Thou knowest my sitting and mine uprising,” I whisper back. “Thou understandest my thought afar off.”

There is fresh breeze on my ankle, and I open my eyes to see that my cassock is being pulled up by Sherlock’s fingers, ever so slowly, as my shin becomes bared to the air.

Sherlock’s hand pauses. For one moment, my heart panics, picturing Father Colmas himself coming around the bend, witnessing Father Watson with Brother Holmes dragging up his robes, pressing his fingers into the intimate place of his old, broken thigh.

But I look around, and we are alone – utterly alone in the vast, empty moors. And the ruins at our backs shield our bodies from view, and the sea before us is empty, only seabirds littering the air.

And so . . . and so. . . I nod, the barest brush of my eyelashes against Sherlock’s face, and he sighs against me, dragging my cassock further up past my knee, the fabric sending prickles of sensation as it brushes against the pale hair on my legs.

“Thou knowest my path and my lying down,” he breathes into the shell of my ear. “Thou art acquainted with all my ways.”

His palm rests on the bare skin above my knee, incredibly warm. I hitch in a breath as it moves slowly up the revealed skin of my leg, touching places no one has ever touched in my life – tracing every contour of my unclothed body.

My voice is rough. “For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, Oh Lord, thou knowest it altogether,” I say back, panting for breath. His fingers reach the raised ridges of the scar on my thigh, and I moan low in my throat when he caresses the scarred skin, pressing against the places where my leg was blasted apart, reaching ever closer to the heat in my groin, between my legs. “Thou has beset me behind and before,” I speak into his curls, breathing him in. “Thou has laid thine hand upon me.”

I grasp the back of his head with my other hand, desperately fighting off my panic, and let my fingers weave through his hair. His fingertips dip towards the inside of my thigh, reaching slowly towards my groin, and my legs fall open at his touch.

“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,” he says, dragging his dry lips down the side of my throat and leaning down further towards his hand on my bare thigh. “It is too high, and I cannot attain unto it.”

The wildflowers sing in the breeze, brushing against the naked skin on my leg. I watch, unable to move, as Sherlock leans down towards the ground, resting himself beside my leg and caressing my thigh with both hands, rubbing up and down the stretch of the muscle.

My leg looks obscene in the sunlight, too defenseless and exposed. But still, his palms run along the length of it, steady and firm. Still, his fingers trace the contours of this secret place.

“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,” he says again, and then he leans down and presses his wet lips to my thigh, licking along the scar and rubbing his cheek against the skin.

Sensation prickles through my body, punching the air from my lungs. I moan out loud, deep in my throat, and I reach forward desperately to clutch a handful of his curls within my palm. My leg shakes, trembling in the grass, as he kisses slowly along the raised edges of the scar, leaving it warm and wet and tingling at his touch, dragging his lips towards the thrumming inside of my thigh.

“Whither shall I go from thy spirit?” I hear myself cry out, voice breathless. “Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?”

And I realize immediately, as soon as the treasured words leave my mouth, that I am speaking them to _him_ , and not to Him, or her.

I lift my hips, desperate to press myself harder against his lips. They kiss towards the place where my thigh meets my groin, sending rolling aches along the bones in my leg, curling in the tips of my toes. The sweet breath of the wildflowers washes over my lungs, drowning me in the scent of her veil – the honey of her voice in my ear in the early dawn, when I have awoken from the darkness of the night to a new day. The sea spray coats the tips of my eyelashes with the breeze, and the roar of it matches the thrum building between my thighs. 

He kisses me once more, wet and warm mouth running along the crease of my thigh, before he looks up with glistening, swollen lips, peering through a curtain of soft curls. He brushes my cassock back down over my leg. “If I ascend into the Heavens, thou art there,” he says softly.

I reach down for him, cupping the back of his head with my palm and bringing him down softly, lying him down into the cool, fresh grass. The sunlight through the broken wood slats paints streaks of light across his face, caressing his throat. I move to rest upon my side, then lean over him to hold his open face between my palms.

“If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there,” I whisper above him, drinking in the sight of his grey eyes against the velvet green of the earth.

I lean down to kiss him on the forehead, the lids of his eyes, tasting his eyelashes, the curve of his soft cheeks. He pants beneath me, reaching up to grab hold of my hip.

“If I take the wings of the morning,” I whisper across his lips before capturing them in a kiss, opening to his mouth and his sweet tongue – smooth wine flowing across my lips, down my throat. The milk and honey I dreamed of as a child coating my mouth. My mouth, which only ever sang His praises until this day – my mouth which now sings praises against his lips, silent prayers, sighs of _allelujia_ between our wet, rolling tongues.

He whimpers against me, and pulls my body down firmly on top of him, pressing our thighs and hips together through layers of cloth, becoming one. I let my full weight rest on his body, just as he holds me up from falling into the soft earth below. He runs his tongue along my bottom lip, sighing softly as I kiss him, and the sounds of our kisses echo clearly in the air – the muffled, wet sounds I’ve only ever heard in the deepest pit of my dreams, dreams I rise to Confess the next day, without any delay.

I kiss him, and his thumb rests at the base of my throat, along my white collar.

“If I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,” he whispers back. His fingers run up my spine as we sigh into each other’s mouths. “Even there, thy hand shall lead me. Even there thy right hand shall hold me.”

“Thy right hand shall hold me,” I say back to him, gasping for breath with my lips along his jaw, the curve of his ear.

The wind rushes over my back in a gentle wave, carrying with it a spray of soft foam from the sea. It shocks me that I am not disturbed – that I am utterly unmoved by the knowledge that the angels can look down and see my black robes covering another man’s form. That the seabirds, His creation, are watching Father Watson’s lips – my own lips – brush against the mouth of Brother Holmes, accepting his touch along my spine, breathing the same air.

I wait to feel unmoored, and yet his hands along my spine hold me together in one piece, anchoring me more firmly than Christ’s feet when he walked upon the surface of the storming sea.

I run my palm along his chest, feeling it hitch and sigh. I am overcome, and I close my eyes to rub my lashes against his cheek – the firm line of his jaw. 

“Eala bhàn,” I whisper to him, unashamed that my voice is choked. “Mo eala bhàn.” Because I understand now, here with Sherlock’s body beneath my own, why it is that Dòmhnall cried out above the bombs. I understand perfectly.

He moans at my words, and I feel them leave shivers down his skin, trembling his fingertips as they rove across my back. His hips roll beneath me, pressing a strange warmth into the muscles of my thigh. He gasps. “If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, even then the night shall be light all about me,” he groans against my throat.

I feel his fingers at my neck, swiftly pulling the white collar away from my throat and tossing it away into the grass. His fingers undo the buttons so I can breathe. I gulp down air, suddenly realizing that I have not taken in a full breath in eleven years, not since I thought it would be the last breath I’d ever take.

His thumbs catch the vibrations of my throat as I speak, “Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee,” I breathe into his ear. My fingers flutter to his neck, slowly undoing the buttons of his robes to reveal the smooth skin of his chest. I sigh at the sight, overwhelmed at the expanse of forbidden skin – the fruit Eve reached out to take in the blessed garden, only there is no evil serpent hiding beneath the collarbones of Sherlock Holmes’ chest. No wicked voice hissing in my ear.

Only her, gasping, “ _I found him whom my soul loveth. I found him and would not let him go._ ”

I press my lips to his bare chest as I slip apart the buttons, pushing his robes aside to reveal naked skin.

His heart beats beneath my mouth – a lark fluttering madly towards the sky. “The night shineth as the day,” I say as I allow myself to press wet kisses up his chest, tasting the inhale of his lungs. “The darkness and the light are both alike to thee.”

I continue tasting the skin of his chest, bursting in my core that he is letting me press my mouth to his bare form beneath the sun. I feel every hitch and ripple of his lungs as he pants, and let my hands grasp at the smooth lines of his stomach, his lean arms, the curls of his hair.

And I realize he has gone silent beneath me.

I pull back, looking down at his face to see him staring unblinking towards the sky, eyes wide and clear. I reach out and cup his face with my palm, letting my fingertips dip into the sea of his brown curls. I brush under his eye with my thumb. “Speak to me,” I whisper.

He gasps, as out of a trance, and his eyes immediately find my face, lips parted and swollen, with pink painted across his cheeks. I drown in his eyes. Suddenly I hear my heart crying out, praying, begging, that Sherlock will continue to speak my name – continue to let me cover him with my lips, and press my tired body into his to feel his warmth, glean some of his quiet strength. That he will let me show him my human love beneath the sky. Let me praise his eyes.

He reaches up and touches my face with his fingertips, tracing the lines of my brow and nose, the harsh curves of my chin and thin lips. He touches them like Thomas touched the scars in the wrists of Christ after he had risen, disbelieving that he had been crucified and risen from the dead.

“How precious also are thy thoughts unto me,” he finally says, voice rough. “How great is the sum of them.”

His eyes are wet, and I let out a great sigh of relief, clutching him closer to me as he lies back in the grass, letting me roll on top of him with my body. His erection presses thickly into my thigh, long and warm, and before thinking, I reach down to take it into my palm through his robes, grasping the outline of it in my hand.

He trembles with a moan, a desperate sound slipping from his throat, and it shoots straight between my thighs, hanging heavy with heat. It sucks the air from my lungs, even as I try to speak. “If I should count your thoughts, they are more in number than the sand,” I say against his open lips. “When I awake, I am still with thee.”

He pushes against me, rubbing into my open palm as his hands clutch at my shoulders, holding me closer to him. He pants in my ear, tiny gasps of breath whining across his lips as I touch the most intimate part of him, letting myself trace his warm cock with my shaking fingers.

She sighs, “ _Blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out_.”

I feel him growing firmer under my hand, desperate with the same heat coiling in the pit of my own belly. I hold his trembling body, breathing praises across his forehead, into his hair, and I feel that I could spread wings and fly up into the heavens at the fact that his cock is not burning the palm of my hand – that it only feels warm and solid and safe. That it only feels like his body, open and trusting to me.

He grips my arm harder, shaking as he rolls against me. His voice trembles. “Surely thou wilt slay the wicked,” he says, desperate.

I gaze into his eyes, suddenly fierce. “Do not I hate them that hate thee? Am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?”

And suddenly his eyes grow wide, and flicker with uncertainty. I press faster between his thighs, rubbing against his long, thick skin.

He holds my gaze, voice frantic. “John. . John, what is this . . what is --”

“Feel,” I whisper to him, more sure of my words now than I had been when I first promised myself to Him. I kiss his cheek. “Sherlock, I am with thee. _Feel_.”

And with that his hips roll once more against my palm and then freeze, and I watch breathlessly as Sherlock throws back his head into the soft grass, and stretches his bare neck, and opens his pale eyes towards the clouds. His lips cry out a silent “ _Oh_ ” that drips down my spine like the sound of her voice, shivering like a flame in my core. Warmth spills against my fingers, staining through the fabric of his robes where my palm still cups his softening cock between his thighs.

I am shaken by the beauty of him falling apart beneath me – of him letting go in pleasure that somehow came from my own touch. It aches and vibrates somewhere deep within me, right next to the place where I had ached the first time I heard a choir praise His Name, voices of angels floating through the rafters and towards the heavens on invisible wings.

The earth is quiet. He is trembling, eyes closed as he pants to catch his breath. I slide my palm from between his legs and stroke it up his chest, letting my fingertips rest upon the bare skin of his collarbone. I hold him. “Search me, and know my heart,” I tell him in the barest whisper. I brush my lips across his cheeks. “Try me, and know my thoughts.”

His eyes fly open, and before I can breathe he leans up and pulls me down into an open kiss, licking into my mouth in long, slow sighs until my entire body is filled with his own air – the wetness of his mouth. His fingers cup the back of my head, holding me against him. There is no part of me that exists that does not taste of his lips – no part of my tongue that feels at all separated from his own. I let myself drown in it, this unheralded melding of our physical bodies – more sharp in its intensity than the Father being one with the Son.

And then, out of nowhere, there is a hand on my own erection, the part of me that had been forgotten where it hung heavy and warm between my thighs. His fingers trace the length of it, rolling firmly across the skin, and immediately I explode in pleasure I’ve never before felt. It rolls through my limbs in a bright, mighty roar. Escapes from my mouth in a great cry, echoes in the grass. I spill into my robes, the forbidden release of milk and honey staining the black wool of my cassock with warmth, and Sherlock does not flinch back, or remove his hand from my body. He does not cry out in disgust while I shake against his limbs, and lose control of all my senses, and gasp the Lord’s Name into his ear. He does not push me away, or hold me off his body, or turn his gaze away from my eyes. 

Instead he holds my cock in his palm, gentle and sure, and does not let go until I twitch back, too sensitive for his touch. My mouth is dry and numb, the same way it feels in the dead of night when I’ve awoken myself with a scream. And still, his long arms hold me.

I barely hold myself up from collapsing, wild and gasping for breath. When I open my eyes to see him, he is staring openly into my face, and there are tears in his eyes, threatening to spill over. “See if there be any wicked way in me,” he whispers. 

Something inside of me crumbles at the desperate look in his eyes. I reach up to hold his face and kiss his forehead, sighing against the skin. “Lead me in the way everlasting,” I say back.

Suddenly his chest hitches beneath me, and I feel silent tears on my thumbs. Weariness washes over me in a great, moaning wave. I sit up quickly and pull his limp body against mine, lifting him out of the wildflowers crumpled beneath his back. I cradle him, suddenly strong enough that he doesn’t feel like any weight at all. His hot breath blows against the bared skin of my neck, and I let my hands clutch into his robes without holding back.

He whispers with a rough, wet voice into my neck. “I found him whom my soul loveth,” he chokes out. I moan and grip him harder in my arms. His hands cling back. “I found him and would not let him go.”

And suddenly, the wide open moors feel far too empty, and the wind zips a wail of warning danger up my spine, against my unprotected back. I look up from his curls and gaze around us at the ruins, at the empty sky, and roaring sea, and the vast unbroken horizon.

And I tremble when the Promised land runs dry of milk and honey, and all I see in my mind is the harsh stone walls covered in shadows, and the ghost of a cloak turning the corner before me, just out of my reach. 

My soul groans deep in my chest in despair, more fiercely than it did in the split second I knew I was dying, covered in mud, falling down into the red rain. I suddenly want to cry up towards the heavens, with Sherlock Holmes in my arms, “ _Eloi, eloi, lama sabachtani?_ ”

Instead I hold him close, rubbing his back to ease his labored breaths, fighting past the choking ache spreading through my own chest.

I stroke through his hair. “Mo eala bhàn,” I whisper. “I would not let him go.” 

The wind moans around us, no longer a beautiful song mixed with the breeze. Now it wails. And though I want to rise up and flee from this place with him in my arms; though I want never to return to the stone walls, and instead bring him to a place where there are no white collars, and where we can breathe, I know that I can do none of these things. The finality of it rings in my spirit like a death bell across the moors, shivering with the same hum that sounded when Christ muttered, “ _It is finished._.”

And all I can do is hold him in the last moments before we must return. All I can do is block his cheek from the wind with the palm of my hand, and stroke through his soft curls, and tell him again in the softest whisper, “Sherlock, mo eala bhàn, I found him and would not let him go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New verses and Biblical stories referenced:  
> -Song of Solomon 5:1 "I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey."  
> -Song of Solomon 8:6 "Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame."  
> -Psalm 27:14 "Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord."  
> -Song of Solomon 2:2 "Like a lily among thorns is my darling among the young women."  
> -Song of Solomon 2:12 "Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land."  
> -Isaiah 43:2 "When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee."  
> -Song of Solomon 4:11 "Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon."  
> -Psalm 59:1 "Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God: defend me from them that rise up against me."  
> -1 John 1:9 "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."  
> -Song of Solomon 1:4 "Take me away with you--let us hurry! Let the king bring me into his chambers. Friends We rejoice and delight in you; we will praise your love more than wine. See how right they are to adore you!"  
> -Song of Solomon 8:10 "I am a wall, and my breasts are like towers. Thus I have become in his eyes like one bringing contentment."  
> -Numbers 14:8 "If the LORD delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey."  
> -Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth."  
> -Song of Solomon 4:16 "Come ... blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits." (Yes, that's really what it says).  
> -Song of Solomon 2:14 "My dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hiding places on the mountainside, show me your face, let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely."  
> -Psalm 139: the Psalm John and Sherlock recite during their final intimate moment together on the moors (minus the verses about God knowing you when you're still in your mother's womb).  
> -Song of Solomon 3:4 "I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me."  
> -John 19:30 "When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit."  
> -I very briefly reference many Bible stories in this chapter. I'm hoping that context clues will be enough to understand their usage if you're unfamiliar with the original scripture, but please feel free to ask for more clarification or background on anything! I'm leaving out longer explanations here just to save space for the verses. 
> 
> Did I mention this fic has a happy ending? Because I promise this fic has a happy ending! Now that I'm back in full priest!lock mode, expect the next chapter much sooner than the wait for this one. I'm shamefully behind on replying to comments (plesae forgive me!), but if you know me at all, you should know your comments are TREASURED and ADORED, and will be replied to eventually, even if it takes me a few weeks. 
> 
> Y'all are fantastic!


	8. You Have Stolen My Heart With One Glance of Your Eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those Celtic chills up your spine to go with the misty moors, do yourself a favor and listen to "Eleanór na Rún" [HERE.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC9v4DCFdcM/)
> 
> Because I'm fickle and couldn't decide on a religious song for this chapter, have another dose of Celtic! Listen to a gorgeous version of "Òran an Ròin" by our fav gal Julie Fowlis [HERE.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IB4TBIxtYI/)
> 
> You'll notice I've added an 'end chapter' to this fic! I have absolutely NO idea if I'll be able to stick to 12, but based on what I have mapped out in my head I think it's a good number to go by. Enjoy!

_27th October 1927_

 

I dream of black eyelashes over soft, cradled skin.

A voice trails across my chest, a cascade of honeyed oil that slides down my throat, “ _Thy right hand shall hold me_ ,” it says, glowing warm. “ _John, thy right hand shall hold me. . ._ ”

Wildflowers flutter from the sky in gentle blankets, settling on the lengths of my thighs and at my hips. I am naked – the rough wool of my cassock and robes stripped away completely from my bare skin, disappeared entirely from the earth.

My body looks strong, chest clear and muscles thick and lean.

Fingertips trail up my arms, leaving shivers through my pale hair. The voice speaks from somewhere between my clenched thighs, “ _"Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates,_ ” it says, blowing warm air softly through the hair at my groin. The voice shakes, “ _filled with pleasant fruits._ ”

I am undone. The rolling of my body against the soft grass fills my lungs with clean air, settles like hot incense beneath my ribs, and my fingertips tremble, grasping wildly to hold the voice within my palms.

Then the voice is gone. I am cold and dark, rough stone cutting into the skin of my bare back. I leap to my feet, floating on angel’s wings with tattered feathers, and the black corridors moan at me like the wailing call of the deep sea.

She is singing from far away, muffled by the night. Her voice is a leaf in the wind, winding its way to my lips like lost pollen in the foggy dark. “ _Open to me, my love, my dove, my undefiled,_ ” her voice echoes. “ _Open to me._ ” 

I follow it, run towards it, twisting madly through the halls. I slap my hands against the stone, and drag my feet through the muddy ground. Thrill hotly in my core when my muscles do not fail.

I burst through a crumbling wooden door, shattering the splinters with my palms. Candlelight pours over me, warming my inner thighs, and I see him, kneeling in the middle of the chapel floor with his curls bowed down.

I see him – I have found the one whom my soul loveth, waiting for me.

He is draped in thick black. He turns his head to me, lips parted and panting, that same way he had turned towards me that day when I looked in on him in his chambers. He is speaking to me, lips moving, but no sound escapes his mouth.

I rush to him, bare feet echoing on the stone. I stand before him, his eyes at my unclothed hips and belly, and I allow myself to reach out and run my fingers through his curls. He sighs – a silent wave moving through his chest.

I speak, and my voice sounds like it is drifting down from the rafters, cloaked in soft stained glass. “ _Behold the Lamb of God,_ ” I say down to him. His lips are covered in gold, dripping down over his chin. With the tip of my thumb, I reach down and catch the drip of gold on his jaw, dragging it back up and pushing it between his open lips. 

He licks my thumb and smiles. “ _John_ ,” his silent voice says.

I step closer, until my own body is touched by the candlelight bathing only his skin. “ _Behold, behold him who takes away the sins of the world,_ ” I say. He turns his cheek into my palm, gazing up with glassy eyes.

I feel his hands on my bare shins, rubbing up against my hair, until his fingertips rest over the place on my thigh, right on the place where a hidden voice tells me a scar would normally be. “ _Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb_ ,” I tell him, sighing.

His eyes are glittering, palms sliding along the inside of my thighs. “ _Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof,”_ he says, and though his voice is silent I can hear it in my core. He cups between my legs with his palm, and it is only then I realize that I am rock hard and aching, my cock jutting out into the space between our bodies, hovering near his lips, and he rolls my heavy balls between his long fingers as he licks his lips. “ _But only say the word, and my soul shall be healed,_ ” he finishes.

I pull my fingers from his cheek and touch my own erection, grasping it firmly and guiding it closer to his mouth. I throb, lying heavy and hot in my palm, and I cannot take my eyes away from the liquid glistening at the tip.

I am breathless. “ _The body of Christ,_ ” I hear myself say.

“ _Open to me, my love, my dove,_ ” her voice calls down from above us. She swims through his curls. “ _My undefiled one, open to me_.”

And he does, parting his mouth and leaning forward towards my body. His sweet tongue lies softly, a rose petal kept safe between his golden lips. 

“Amen,” he whispers. My own breath sounds like a storm in my ears. I guide my erection between his lips, shivering at the touch of his wet mouth on the skin, and with a deep groan I rub myself until a fat drop of liquid falls slowly from the tip of my cock onto his tongue. His eyes blow wide, clear blue nearly eradicated by pupils, and he moans before closing his lips around my skin, holding it while sucking the rest of the liquid from my slit.

My knees buckle. He pulls his mouth away and reaches up to catch me as I sink to the ground, my bare skin pressed against the rough wool of his robes.

He grasps my arms, leaning forward to stroke his nose against mine. I can taste his breath, settling like cool water along my tongue. A waft of rich smoke.

“ _Hail Mary, full of grace,_ ” he whispers. “ _The Lord is with thee._ ”

I feel his lips move against my cheek as he speaks. His huge hands rover over the naked skin of my back, holding me close against the cloth covering his limbs and pressing his thigh against my cock, still warm and heavy.

“ _Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus_ ,” he says. I inhale the scent of him, overwhelming my core. Tea leaves, and old parchment, and oil at the base of his throat. A pomegranate seed dripping with honey, covered in myrrh.

He grasps my backside in his palm, squeezing until I moan before trailing his fingers up my spine, bone by bone. “ _Holy Mary, Mother of God,_ ” he cries out into my ear. My nipples grow peaked rubbing against his rough clothes, sending fiery shivers down my belly and between my thighs. He still holds me. “ _Pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death,_ ” he says.

She answers: “ _"A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon._ ”

“ _Streams from Lebanon,_ ” I hear myself whisper.

His hand is on my throat, pulling me back so I can look him in the eyes. They are the jewels in the crown that adorned Esther’s long hair – the shafts of wheat Boaz allowed Ruth to pick in his field.

And then, between his full, red lips, a rosary shines in the gold. He holds it in his mouth, resting it against his lips, and the rest of it drapes across his chin in a rare cascade.

“ _Pray for us sinners_ ,” I say back, before I lean forward and press my gasping lips against his mouth, surrounding the precious rosary held safely along his tongue. He melts into me, grasping my face with both hands and caressing my tired mouth with his young, full lips. The rosary beads rattle against his breath as he sighs, as he drags his wet tongue along the crease of my lips and draws my mouth open. As he moves the rosary beads forward with his tongue, warm and wet from the heat of his own mouth, and presses them gently between my own lips, letting me taste them. 

“ _Open to me, my dove,_ ” she cries softly between our bodies – the tiniest slip of air between my skin pressed to his robes. 

I gasp, moaning to breathe as the rosary rolls along my tongue, tasting of his mouth and glistening from his lips. He kisses me deeply, swiping his tongue along my own, until I do not know where my own mouth ends and his begins, and I fear that his precious rosary will slip down my own throat, lost inside me, and his hands reach directly to the muscle beneath my skin, caressing my bones, and his tongue is so warm.

“ _Open to me_ ,” she still cries. “ _My dove, open to me!_ ”

Silence.

I wake to candlelight peering under the slats of my chamber door – my Brothers shuffling to the chapel for Lauds on quiet feet.

My heart races, and the space between my thighs is hot and damp. The front of my body feels too empty and cold, and I shiver, quickly shutting my eyes, as the last few wisps of the dream crash over me, drowning me back in the warmth on my skin, and his hands on my bare spine, and his tongue slipping into my mouth, tasting his rosary on my own lips.

I wait for the panic to flood my limbs at the memory. For the sky to turn black, and my fingers to go numb, and my heart to scream at me to get out of bed and wash myself. To strip my body of the memory of his ghostly skin against mine, and prostrate myself to the cold stone for redemption, and cry out to the heavens that I am wicked and have sinned.

I wait for nearly a minute, knowing I will be late for prayer if I don’t move. And yet . . . and yet . . . the panic never comes. There is a thrill – yes. A smoldering flame crackling at the base of my spine. There is the memory of her voice in my ears like poured wine. And there is fear, of course there is fear, prickling on the skin behind my ears – down at my nape.

But more than anything, all I feel as I gaze up at the ceiling with dampness sticking between my thighs is sadness, utter longing. The pull of the cord in my breast that pleads to leap up from my chamber, and drag myself up the tall stairs, and throw myself by his side, saying, “ _I found him and would not let him go._ ”

I must get ready. I strip from my nightshirt and stand naked in the freezing air, eyeing the small wash basin in the corner of my room. I know I should wash between my legs, cleansing my release from my secret skin. That I should drape my familiar cassock over my bones only when they are pure and dry.

I do not wash.

My heart thuds as my clothing rubs against the wetness clinging to my thighs, reminding me of the memory of his dreamlike hands on my hips.

Reminding me of the reality of my body atop his, not even one full day ago, as we rested on the moors.

My mind is still cloaked in memory as I slip out into the corridor, donning my hood and rushing with my cane to catch up to my Brothers in the chapel. In my mind, I am still holding Sherlock Holmes on the empty moors, with the wildflower pollen pressed into the clothes on his back, and his quiet tears staining the skin of my thumbs.

Where I pressed my lips to his hair just as the sun was starting to dip, and told him that we had to start making our slow way back. And where he followed me, not resisting, on the narrow paths back to St. Sebastian’s, gripping my hand so tightly in his I barely needed my cane. He didn't tried to wipe away the wetness still clinging to his lashes, or hide from me the swollen red lines around his eyes. Didn't tried to convince me, even though I desperately wanted him to, to turn away, and run from the stone walls, and hide anywhere else on earth.

He followed me, and held my hand until the walls came into view. “This is the beginning,” he said, just after releasing my fingers from his own, and his words were a small question, tinged with our silent fear.

And I gazed up at him, and let him see the full depth of emotion in my eyes. I touched his forearm over his robes, in full view of the seminary, and known that it was somehow the most intimate touch I’d ever given.

“My darling, it is the beginning,” I answered him, voice rough with feeling. And only then did the low dread leave his eyes, and his face cleared. And he nodded before following me back within the high stone walls, allowing ourselves to be cloaked once more in smoke and shadow, greeted by our Brothers just filing in for Vespers.

And now, as I am the last to enter the small, filled chapel, and as all eyes turn towards the sound of my harsh cane, I nearly gasp out loud at the holy love that rushes against my skin – that washes over me in a mighty perfumed wave from where the Blessed Virgin stands, her white marble arms quietly outstretched. I fight to hide my smile as I find my place by his side, overwhelmed at the holy air I feel vibrating against my body – the awe I haven’t felt in weeks suddenly returned. And my throat swallows hard at the fact that here, now, with the remnants of my release still dripping from my thighs – with the dream of my cock between his lips burned into my mind – now the trumpeting awe of this prayer at dawn returns to my soul.

Sherlock shifts, invisible to anyone else but me, and his entire arm is pressed against my side in silent comfort. And as I sing, my eyes sting with warm water in their corners, and my voice trembles, overcome anew by the glory of her veil.

-

The corridors seem lighter as I make my way through them after Lauds, with fresh air running across the stone in a cool breeze. I limp hard through the courtyard, delighting in the feel of the soft sun against my back even as my leg aches from the strain of our long walk the day before. 

Even as I still feel the memory of his wet lips tracing the scars along my thigh.

I hear someone coming up swiftly behind me, feet crunching the dead leaves in the crisp, empty air. I think it must be Father Colmas to ask after my errand the day before, and I start to madly race through my mind searching for words – for something I could say that would not strike me down in sin on the wet stones. 

I steel my shoulders, palm clenching as David’s must have done before Goliath, fighting with myself to remember that there are no bombs here, no red mud.

But before I can turn around to face the first test of this new battle, before I can start my apologies for returning so late with Brother Holmes, a warm hand is wrapped against my own not on my cane, and something is being pressed into my palm for me to hold. There is immense heat, and a wash of roses, and I nearly choke on the swift air. And before I can react, that body is moving away again, disappearing into the shadows. And even though that body is cloaked in fabric and a hood, my body sings the answer to exactly who it is.

“ _His countenance is as Lebanon,_ ” she whispers softly in my ear. “ _Excellent as the cedars_.”

I stand frozen in the middle of the courtyard, heart racing at the sudden contact, longing to throw my cane aside and simply chase him down the corridors, to grasp his robes, tell him, “ _By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth. And it was you._ ”

But I stay still, letting the wind whip my cassock against my ankles, still shivering at the dried release clinging to the hair on my upper thighs. I look down at my palm, the one his long fingers had briefly held, and I see inside a tiny piece of paper, perfectly rolled. 

Something sings down my spine. I look up wildly, glancing around the courtyard to make sure no one else is there, before unrolling the small paper with fingers that I am shocked do not even shake.

His message is brief: “ _Let’s begin by the sea, at the only time._ ”

I stare at it for a moment, suddenly wanting to press my lips to the dried ink, tasting the ghosts of his fingers against the softened, crinkled paper. The entire earth disappears save for my fingers cradling his words. And then I understand – that we will meet each other during our only time off, the recreation hour – and that he understood me from yesterday when I had said, “ _It is the beginning_.”

A smile threatens to break across my face, even as a part of me burns sharply at the fact that this note will need to be hidden – that or burned. I re-fold it with calm fingers and tuck it into the pocket closest to my breast, taking a moment to hold the paper closer to the warmth of my skin. 

And as I do, I hear her, like a dove among the clouds, “ _John, do not fear, for it is I who have redeemed you. I have summoned you by name, and behold, you are mine.”_

-

He meets me by the rocks.

Huge boulders that rise up along the outskirts of the seminary, threatening to pierce the grey sky, or topple over into the sea, or sink so heavily down into the mossy earth that they swallow all of us up, dragging us down to the icy core.

He meets me there. I can barely contain the smile at the corners of my lips. He watches me, eyes never leaving my tired face, as I emerge from the shadows and gasp fresh air into my lungs. And it burns in me, a tiny flame flickering to life behind my ribs, that somehow the sight of a fading priest with a wooden cane could bring light into the eyes of the radiant man before me. Could make him bow his head, eyes glittering, and softly whisper, “John.”

I want to reach out and touch him, feel his skin beneath my hand. I want to tell him, “ _That was real what happened yesterday, was it not? That was real, you let me feel you. You let me lay you down among the flowers. You’ve known my name.”_

We’re still in full view of the seminary, and his lips remain silent and closed. The wind is rushing against my back, pushing me away from the cold walls, and through the brightness I see the small sadness in his eyes – the sadness that we only have twenty minutes to be alone.

He nods towards the rocky cliffs at his back, silent words, and so I follow. 

I follow the stark outline of his black robes against the sky – a raven in black feathers fluttering high into the cool grey. I watch his curls whip in the wind, throat tight at the knowledge that I have felt those curls upon my cheeks, brushing gently along the crease of my inner thighs, upon my tongue.

We walk until we’re sheltered from the wind by the sea of boulders, blocking out the view of St. Sebastian’s at our backs and leaving us alone with the ocean beyond the cliffs. For a while, we are silent. Sea birds caw above us to be heard over the roar of the waves, and our cloaks create rolling billows in the harsh breeze, and we are alone.

“I dreamt of you,” I finally say, standing so that only the backs of our hands touch between us. He looks over at me with bright eyes that look well rested, not bothering to brush away his curls. “As did I.”

“I do not regret what we did yesterday,” I go on. “Nor will I Confess it.”

He hums, fingers twitching to gently trace along my hand. “I know. I could see it on your face. Neither will I.”

I turn my palm so that I can weave my cold fingers through his, thrilling when he latches on tightly to my hand, hidden in the billows of our cloaks.

There is a part of me that needs to speak – to ask him if he realizes that it feels that I have known him for a very long time, that I first met him in that sunrise on the banks of the Somme, or the day I first put on my fresh uniform, or the first time I said, “ _Amen._ ” That it was his hands on my thigh soothing the pain when I lay in the hospital, and his finger that anointed my forehead with oil the day of my Ordination, and his voice filling me with holy joy before each first light of dawn.

But I do not need to speak at all, because his hand rests tightly in mine, and so I stand, and I look out over the cliffs down at the sea, and I remember a night, lifetimes ago, when he had pulled me back from the screaming edge.

It startles me when he finally speaks. “Can you hear her?” he asks.

I frown out at the waves, and his body grows restless beside mine. “Who?”

He slips his fingers from my grip, wrapping his arms around his own chest and staring straight ahead. He takes a deep breath. “The Mother of God,” he says softly, voice oddly flat. “Can you hear her? Physically hear her voice?”

“ _John,_ ” she suddenly moans above the waters.

I shift on my feet, feeling naked. “Yes,” I hear myself whisper. I clear my throat, hoping I don’t sound as weak and feeble as I feel. “Ever since I can remember. I used to hear Him too, but . . .”

And to my surprise, he sighs beside me, and leans closer into my body, pressing his warmth all along my right side. “I hear her, too,” he says in a rush. He reaches up to hold back the curls from his face, blinking against the glare of sunlight reflecting off the waves below. “I would speak to her, when I was little. Talk to her when I was working in the –” he pauses, and swallows hard. “When I was back at home,” he finishes.

I lean against him. “Before you taught yourself to read,” I say, suddenly desperate that he knows that I know – that I understand.

He sucks in a breath and looks at me, a frown of confusion on his face.

“It seems Brother Hales knew of your family,” I go on. “He shared what he knew with Father Ryland, who shared with the priests.” I reach up and hold his forearm. “No one else knows.”

He blinks hard, and his eyes are tinged with a curtain of sad grey. “I was wondering if Brother Hales remembered me,” he says. He looks down at my hand still resting on his arm. “We’re from the same village, farther up north. My family . . . we worked for his family. In their fields. Sometimes he would let me see his marbles if he was out playing beyond their garden.”

My chest aches, unable to see anything but a small head of curls emerging from muddy wheat, eyeing a handful of marbles. “Hard to believe you thought he would forget a name like ‘Sherlock Holmes’,” I finally say.

He grins, a sad smile on the corner of his lips. “I’ve always gone by William,” he says. “Even here – it’s what’s on my papers.”

Suddenly something clicks in my mind, illuminating what was before unclear – one beam of light piercing through the fog. “Jeanne d’Arc,” I say into the silence. 

He hums, and a spark shines in the deepest corner of his eyes. “Jeanne d’Arc,” he says back, and his voice drips over the simple words like liquid gold, draping them as an offering at His feet, cloaked in beauty.

“Your essay was not merely an essay.”

He shakes his head. “I learned of her before I ever had a chance to read His Word – before I knew that there were others who also heard the Holy voices. I . . . I don’t know how to explain it. She became my friend – the one voice that told me I was not unwell, fit to be locked away. And I . . . I loved her.”

His words are careful, hovering around what I feel is a sharp thorn. I step closer, so close that we share the warm breath between our mouths. “You loved her . . . but no longer?”

His lips shake. “I was fifteen when she was canonized,” he says. For one brief moment, there is a brightness in his face, banishing the clouds. “I couldn’t believe the news when it finally reached us – that she was receiving such honor. I remember it like yesterday – how I ran down the halls of the church I was living to find the priest – Father Gromley. I wanted us to have a Mass in her honor. . .”

Something clenches within me when his voice trails off, and despite everything I reach up to place my palm upon his cheek. “Sherlock,” I say softly, not knowing what else to say at the sudden darkness in his eyes.

He gazes at me, pale eyes never leaving my own. “He was of the priests that disagreed with her canonization,” he whispers. “He did not . . . he told me that I wasn’t . . .” He sets his jaw, breathing out hard through his nose. “He told me to repent of such sins – of believing her to be holy. He assigned me a Penance.”

The air feels too cold. “What Penance?” I ask him, barely audible over the wind.

He looks down at me, and the sadness in his face, the haunted sharpness in his eyes, nearly wrenches the stale breath from my lungs. “Later,” he says back.

My lips move without sound, searching and failing for what I could possibly say, desperately wanting to clutch his robes in my hands, and kiss his mouth, and tell him, “ _There is nothing under the sun that you need to Confess – no wrongness at all within your soul. No hint of dark._ ”

Instead he speaks before I can, reaching up to cover my hand on his cheek with his own. “You have your own lost love,” he says softly.

I am too bare before him to even wonder at how he knew. Familiar dark brown eyes swim in my vision for a brief moment, rising out of the sea below like ghosts, looking lost. I press my cheek into his hand, not disagreeing. “Later,” I say back, and he nods.

The bell for prayer tolls behind us, mourning out over the endless moors and sending a shiver of dread up my spine, when it used to spark joy.

I feel panic, suddenly wanting to beg him to run with me far away, to never again let me see the inside of the cold, stone walls. To beg him to let us go where her voice is the only voice we can hear – the only eyes on our skin.

The bell tolls again, pouring stale water over my fierce desire to up and flee. My chest falls flat. I sigh, feeling a sudden exhaustion in my limbs.

He sighs too, letting his hand fall slowly away from my face as he turns to walk back towards St. Sebastian’s, leaving the cliffs behind. Wildness overtakes me. I reach out and grab his wrist, speaking before I even know what words I will say.

“I had never said the word ‘Paris’ out loud before I spoke to you about it that day,” I tell him in a rush.

The desperation churns within me, threatening to spill out in a deep, helpless moan. I need him to know, need him to understand that I have told him everything, from the depths of my soul – that I have held nothing back, am just as stripped bare, that he holds the key to my very blood in his hands.

That we are the same.

A noise escapes my throat when Sherlock takes a step back towards my body, relief so sharp it nearly knocks me to my knees in the weaving grass. He glances back at the walls of the church, briefly scanning over the stone, and then he leans forward, brushing his cold lips against my forehead beneath my hair. He kisses me once. “I know,” he whispers, one hand reaching up to trail down my frozen chest, shooting a gentle pleasure through the rough wool.

My forehead is cold in the wind where his kiss had left the warmth of his lips. We walk back in silence, standing a respectable distance apart. My throat is tight, trying to swallow down the panic in my lungs – panic that this is somehow already the end to the beginning.

I can tell he feels it, too.

Just when we reach the gates, he turns to face me, gazing at me for so long I think the earth has frozen still. He looks young, and I hate myself that I cannot gather the strength to banish the fear from his eyes. 

“John,” he whispers, lips barely moving as he speaks. “All beautiful you are, my darling. There is no flaw in you.”

His words catch me off guard, passing through my stunned body like a rushing wave. Without meaning to, I suddenly laugh, a huge smile bursting across my face. A smile that he _sees_ me, that he looks at me with my collar and cane, and that he somehow finds it pleasing. That he chooses to spend his time beside my body. That he has told me his name – the gifts the wise men placed at Christ’s feet where he lay in his manger on that fateful night, glowing with reverence beneath the bright stars.

He smiles back, and where there had been fear, fresh emotion thrums between us. “All beautiful you are, my darling,” I say back to him, letting the words settle on my tongue like soft honey. We look at each other for one more moment, and I drink in the water of his eyes – the water Moses struck from the rock in the desert to keep the Israelites from dying. Then I nod to him, a silent, “ _I will see you_ ,” before he makes his way back within the walls, head held high.

I wait for him to disappear into the dark corridors, trying to school the smile from my face. I hear her voice in the wind, a gentle murmur, not even fully formed words, and it caresses me, weaving through my hair at the nape of my neck.

And it is only once I take my first weak steps across the cobblestone, gently placing my cane so I do not stumble – it is only once I have turned my gaze back to the walls with fresh determination – that I see something, a flash of movement, up in one of the windows far above.

And the blood drains from my face, leaving my skin cold and clammy, when I see that it is Father Barry staring down at me through the glass, glancing once to the place where Sherlock has just disappeared before quickly closing the curtain before his face.

I freeze. My soul screams to know how much he has seen, how much he now knows. All around me the earth stretches like a barren, dark wasteland – an endless repetition of the path Christ had to walk up to Golgotha, carrying the cross along his bleeding back, stripped bare of skin.

The next gust of wind sounds utterly empty across the broken moors, no longer carrying the lark of her sweet voice to my ears. 

Only silence – a silence louder than that moment after the last bomb.

And though I had spoken, “ _it is the beginning,_ ” I now fear I have already seen the end.

 

\--

 

_10th November 1927_

 

We are not alone again for two weeks.

The time passes like fresh, blooming aches in my breast, tugging me down until my shoulders hunch forward with the heavy strain. 

When I open my eyes each morning, the ache is already there, suffocating me before I can even take my first breath of the dawn. I kneel on weary legs, and do not press my cheek to the cold stone. My prayers pass through my lips like stale, thin bread, leaving my mouth dry and gasping for more. 

When I sing, the lark that was once my voice lies motionless on the hard floor. My Brothers pass me odd looks, _those_ looks, as they join in to bolster my weak song. As they eye me in the hallways, walking slower than I ever have before. As they witness me tremble so that I drop pages from my fingers, and so my cane clatters to the ground just out of my reach – so they must stop to pick it up and hand it back to me with sad eyes, with _those_ eyes.

When I teach, I cannot breathe. His presence hovers at my elbow, so close without actually touching, and my chest beats a steady wail – every word I have ever heard him speak. And oh, how I want to stretch out the fingers of my right hand upon the wooden table, how I want to reach until they wind through his fingers as he listens, mouth closed and silent.

How I want to walk through the corridors without growing weary and numb. How I want to hear him say my name, say her name, say _anything_ \- how I want to turn over in my cold bed and feel his warmth beneath my sheet.

How I want to taste him. To hold him so close against my body that his heart becomes one with mine. To press my lips once more to his bare and open throat, and feel the vibrations of his voice as he lets himself speak.

How I want to call, “ _Sherlock, I have found the one, I have found him . . ._ ,” and know that he hears me in the dead of night, through thick stone.

How I want to be the man who held him close upon the moors, and who told him to _feel_ , and rushed to his side in the midst of the storm, and gasped his name. How I want to once more tell him, “ _We will walk and not be weary, we will run and not be faint._ ” 

How I want to be his gallant darling, worthy of his full lips pressed to my cane, instead of this priest who limps through hallways like a weary, forgotten shadow, too fragile to reach out and take his hand beneath the sky.

Too watchful of sharp eyes through windows high above.

And still, in all of this chaos, Sherlock Holmes finds me.

He walks close enough to brush pass me accidentally through the halls. He stands by me as I sing. His fingers linger on mine when he hands me his books, his papers, my cane. In the courtyards, he is there. As I walk, he is by my side, just behind my every step. His eyes are trained on my mouth as I speak. My every step is under his gaze. My every breath.

And every time we touch I hear her wail, “ _Open to me._ ”

But I cannot.

I cannot, and it pains like a fresh bullet in my thigh – that I had told him, with emotion in my eyes, “ _It is the beginning,_ ” and yet I’ve already let it end.

I am Peter, who plead on hands and knees that he would be strong, would not grow faint, and yet still denied the Lord three times before the rooster crowed at dawn. Peter, who said, “ _I will never disown thee,_ ” and then went on to speak, “ _I do not know him._ ”

Peter, whose hand Christ had once held, who still wept bitterly and all alone.

“Do you agree, Father Watson?”

I startle from my thoughts, realizing with a clench in my throat that I have been staring at the hand Sherlock touched earlier today as he passed by my side in the halls. I look up to see every one of my fellow priests’ eyes on mine, no one daring to speak aloud that they know I haven’t heard of word of what’s been said.

I sit up straighter in my chair, barely hiding a wince at my stiff leg. “Forgive me,” I say. “My mind was elsewhere . . .”

Father Colmas smiles, the same way he does at young children clutching his robes after a Mass. “We were discussing our upcoming teachings for Mass at St. Ignatius’,” he says slowly. “It has been suggested that we take turns focusing on the parables of Christ.”

Relief floods through me that I haven’t missed something more important. I clear my throat. “Yes, of course, I am in agreement with you all,” I say. 

Father Ryland speaks up, “I feel called to re-examine the parable of the Good Samaritan. My heart has been heavy, as of late, with the seeds of unkindness being sown in the villages around us.”

Father Colmas nods solemnly. “Then it shall be yours,” he says.

There is a startled grunt in the corner, and Father Jacobs nearly rises from his seat. “Time to plant seeds, you say?” he asks wildly, still half asleep. “Is it springtime already?”

Father Woodley leans over, hushing him gently like a mother with a newborn child. “Hush now, Father, it is the parable of which we speak, no need to fret for the planting.”

Father Jacobs’ eyes are closed before Father Woodley even finishes speaking.

Father Harrows speaks up, adjusting the glasses on his nose. “I shall speak on the Persistent Widow,” he announces, and the others around me nod. One by one, my fellow Brothers choose their parables for their own Masses, the decisions easily flowing from their tongues with no thought at all.

All eyes turn to me when I still have not spoken. “Watson?” Father Colmas gently prompts. I shift in my seat, meaningless verses racing through my mind, decades of studying His Word trying to drown out the vision of blue eyes distracting my thoughts.

“I’m not sure,” I finally say. “Perhaps I might take some time for prayer, to reflect on my choice –”

“If I may,” Father Barry says, the first words he’s spoken all afternoon since simply saying, “ _the Tax Collector,_ ” when asked about his own parable choice. Something in his tone of voice rings like warning in my chest. 

In my mind, unbidden, I see a window curtain falling closed.

“If I may,” he says again, sitting up straight. “I might suggest our Father Watson consider giving the parable of the Prodigal Son. It weighs on my heart that he might have special . . . wisdom for those who are lost.”

My heart races, fingertips tingling as the blood drains from my limbs. He stares at me, eyes soft, and the air in the room is like lead in my lungs.

Father Colmas turns his head, considering. “Speak more of your thoughts, if you would,” he says to Father Barry. “What has put this choice on your mind?”

I cannot look away, frozen in place as Father Barry pins me with his gaze. “What I mean is, I have taken some time for special reflection,” he says, voice steady. “Our Brother Watson has lead a unique life, truly set apart by Christ. It is he, more than any of us, who might know how to reach those who are lost in sin. He who might best remind them that they may still come back to Christ before eternal death – that they might still Repent of their dark secrets before damnation.”

My tongue is dry and aching. I swallow hard, desperately hoping my face isn’t showing my fear. Father Barry appears unmoved, sitting perfectly still with his hands clasped in his lap, gaze soft and gentle.

And yet . . . it cannot be a coincidence that he has chosen to say this to me. And I cannot be imagining the hint of steel hiding in the backs of his eyes.

All eyes are again on me, waiting for my response. I swallow hard, willing my voice to be steady instead of fail. “You pay me a service, Brother,” I say softly. “It is an honor that you feel I have been Called in this way – to reach out to the lost.” I sit up straight in my chair, wishing I could feel her hands upon my shoulders. “I shall speak on this parable,” I decide, voice firm as I meet his steady gaze.

And somehow the room moves on, my Brothers discussing tedious matters of schedules. Somehow none of them notice the way Father Barry’s mouth is sharp at the corners.

Somehow none of them notice the bead of sweat dripping down my brow.

And it is only after they all leave, after the last cloak has filed out of the stale room, that I allow myself to drop my head into my hands and let out a long moan. Only then that my soul is transported back out to the empty moors, with Sherlock Holmes trembling in my arms, as bolts of icy fear shoot through my veins and pool in my gut. 

Only then, once I am completely and entirely alone, that I plead with her, “Lord, help me,” even though only the old books can hear my cry.

-

I dream of the Somme.

Gnashing of teeth screaming out of the red mud, tearing at my bare arms. 

I dip my hands into the blood. “ _Our Father, who art in Heaven. . ._ ”

Darkness grips me, reaching down my throat and clawing the words from my lungs. There are bloodied limbs hanging from the clouds, and the sky is black.

“ _Hallowed be Thy Name,_ ” I try to scream out, but no one can hear me, and the earth pulls me down into the mud, deep into the cold.

She is there – tattered white marble covered in gunpowder and smoke, hanging weightless in the sky. “ _Our Mother, who art in Heaven,_ ” I try again, my voice hoarse and shrill. She turns towards me, opening up her arms to reach my face, calling me on soft lips, spilling rose petals into the fog –

She explodes. The bullets riddling her body so fiercely she crumbles into dust.

The mud pulls me down, down. Deep until my legs and stomach and chest are covered with earth, cut off from the air.

I struggle fiercely, gasping for life even as my limbs grow cold. I pull frantically up through the mud, trying to keep my head above the thick earth, screaming for air.

And I see him.

He kneels down over me, skin pristine – not one speck of wet dirt or blood. He peers into my face. “ _John_ ,” he whispers, and I can barely hear him over the War.

“ _John, I am here_.”

The earth pulls me deeper, thick mud choking off my throat. “ _Thy kingdom come_ ,” I choke out, hot tears burning the skin of my cheeks. I flail my arms fiercely against the mud sucking me down, fighting for air.

“ _John_ ,” he says again. “ _John, listen to me. I am here. I am here with you_.”

More mud, more screams, deeper into the earth. 

“ _John, you’re dreaming. Listen to me. I am with you. Hear my voice, I am here._ ”

“ _Please,_ ” I try to call out, desperate to still live. Desperate to hear his voice say my name one last time before I am dragged to hell by the claws at my ankles. My chest is heaving, gasping for air that can’t make its way into my lungs. I struggle one last time, one more fierce pull against the sinking mud of the earth.

“ _John . . ._ ” I hear, far away from my face, way up in the storming clouds.

And I fight for air, scream against the void, rip my bones up out of the bloodied banks, and then –

Silence.

Thick darkness wraps around my skin in gently quiet. I am sitting up freely, and part of me recognizes the press of my cot underneath my legs.

“John,” I still hear, the voice carrying over from my dreams.

“John, I am here. You were dreaming.”

My eyes fly open. I gasp, taking in the familiar walls of my small chamber in the moonlight – the press of my tangled nightshirt around my chest. The stains of tears wrapping down my throat and onto my shoulders.

The wheezing in my throat.

And out of the darkness, I see a shadow by my side, slowly moving. I try to cry out through hoarse lungs, flinging my body back against the wall to flee to safety, still hearing the echoes of the bullets piercing my mind.

“John,” the shadow says. “John it’s me. You’re alright, it’s just me.”

And into a shaft of moonlight steps a familiar head of curls.

Everything shatters.

I collapse back onto the mattress, curled up in a ball with my hands over my face. I haven’t dreamed like this in weeks, and my body struggles not to succumb to the panic – not to disappear.

I can hear myself weeping, muffled as if from far away. Anger boils in my chest – anger and self-hatred. And there is confusion, the desperate wracking of my mind to try and figure out how Sherlock Holmes is here, now, in my chambers in the middle of the night. Whether he is only a ghost, a cruel imagining by the Devil himself. And there is fear, still clinging to my bones like icy tar. And there is despair.

But more than any of the emotions flooding through my chest, there is shame – horrific shame cutting off the air in my weak throat. Shame that he is seeing me like this. That after I had held him in the storm, and kissed his cheeks with steady lips, that I am once again dangling weakly on the edge of the cliff, with him holding me back.

There are soft footsteps behind me, barley heard over the sound of my own shaking limbs. And I wait to feel a hand upon my brow, the dip of the mattress.

Instead I hear my chamber door slowly creaking open.

I bolt upright, new panic rising in my chest. “Don’t go,” I cry out. He freezes with one foot out in the dark corridor, staring back at my face.

I hold out a shaking hand. “Sherlock, please. Please don’t go.”

Something like a sigh escapes his chest, one that I think sounds like relief. He silently closes the door, pulling it shut tight, before turning and walking on swift legs towards the side of my bed. He reaches out and fiercely grips my hand still in the air, holding it up to his chest. I feel his heart racing through his thin robes.

Emotion floods through me at his touch, filling my stinging eyes once again with hot tears. I grip him harder, so hard I feel the bones of fingers creak in my palm.

We gaze at each other, barely making out faces in the darkness. Finally, I lick my lips, and say the words hovering at the back of my throat. 

“Stay with me,” I barely whisper, hoping he will understand what I mean.

Wordlessly he releases my hand before shedding his outer cloak from his shoulders, stripping down to his thin nightshirt beneath, same as my own. I shift aside, and he crawls into my small bed without hesitation, instantly wrapping his body around mine and pressing my back into the curve of his chest, holding me close. His lips are in my hair, and his heartbeat echoes against my spine.

We lie in the thick darkness, with only the sounds of our slowly calming breaths. His palm rests over my lungs like a warm, gentle pressure.

I know I should feel shock burning brightly through my core. Shock that there is another person suddenly sharing my ordained bed – another _man_. Shock that for the first time in my entire life I am drifting off to sleep in the arms of another.

But I am not shocked.

Instead I let my back melt into the curve of his body, drawing in warmth, and one of his palms rubs from the dip of my hip and along my side. Slowly, my heart begins to calm within my chest – the last haunting vestiges of the nightmare fading to smoke. 

When the tears have finally dried from my face, I let myself speak. “How did you know?”

He doesn’t comment that my voice is still gasping and hoarse. He shifts me closer in his arms, speaking with warm puffs of air into the side of my face. “You haven’t been sleeping well lately,” he says. “Not since the last time we met. I was worried . . .”

My sleep-fogged brain tries to understand. “You were outside my room?”

I feel a kiss pressed into my hair. “Not every night, and not the whole night. Just . . . when I couldn’t sleep. I heard you crying out, hitting the mattress. So I came inside.”

Guilt and shame overwhelm me. “Sherlock,” I say, and my voice wavers. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry –”

“Don’t be,” he whispers. He kisses me again. “There is nothing either of us could have done these last two weeks.”

“But I could have found a way, I could have tried –”

“There is nothing to try. I knew you were with me, all the same.”

My chest tightens, and I bring one of his palms up to my dry lips. His breath is hot on the back of my neck. “I do not deserve you,” I speak into his skin.

His thumb caresses the curve of my ear, slowly tracing into my hair. “Mo ghile mear,” he says back, voice thick with emotion. “Neither of us deserve this.”

Sleep pulls at my limbs, dragging me into the warmth of his chest. My heart settles in time with his as he breathes against my scalp. I fight against the weariness, knowing there is so much more to say. “Father Barry,” I say suddenly. “I think he knows . . . he saw us before –”

“Hush,” he whispers, rubbing the tension out of my curled up side. “We can speak in the morning.”

And a part of me deep down knows he will not be by my side in the morning – that my bed will be empty. But I lie to myself, and let my body grow heavy in his arms. He kisses my cheek, and his warm lips linger for a long time on the side of my face.

My breath hitches, just as her voice sings to me from the safety of my bed, quiet and soft.

“I hear her,” I whisper to him, being pulled under the fog of sleep.

He kisses the back of my neck. “What is she saying?”

I close my eyes, breathing in the scent of him at my back. “By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth,” I speak into the dark, echoing her words.

The last thing I feel is the rumble of his chest at my back. 

I think I hear him say, “John,” right before I slip into my dreams.

And as I lie back in a bed of wildflowers under a clear, blue sky, I think I hear, “I love you,” whispered warmly against my nape.

-

The air in the morning is clear.

I blink awake in the calm darkness at my usual hour, my bones vibrating with anticipation of the nearing dawn light. 

I reach out to stretch my limbs, aching at the memory of the nightmare that still hovers in the back of my tired mind – the claws from the muddied earth, and the uselessness of my screams, and the bloodied limbs dangling from the sky.

Her marble face shattered.

I wipe my palms over my face, trying to bring myself back to reality – the real world waiting just beyond my chambers. There is prayer to prepare for, and Lauds to sing, and weak tea to drink in steady palms, and classes to teach –

My cheek presses against something unfamiliar on my pillow. I sit up quickly with a grunt, looking down to see what firm thing dug into my skin.

There is a rosary on my pillow – one that is not mine.

All at once, the memory of the night before slams into me, flooding through my limbs and stealing the air from my cold lungs. How I had called out, screaming against the bombs, and he had been there. How I had begged him to stay, holding my weak hand up into the air, and he had crawled into my bed by my side. How he had held me. How I had fallen asleep to his breath on the back of my neck.

Suddenly, my small bed is the loneliest place in all the world. The air freezes. I lean down towards the pillow, hot shame creeping up my spine even as I allow myself to press my cheek into the warm, thin cotton, breathing in the scent of familiar curls still clinging to my sheets. 

A sob escapes my chest as his scent washes over me – the forever lost knowledge of what it would have been like to awaken in his arms. Despair clouds over my eyes, mixed with sharp longing. I want to flee from my chambers, run wildly up the winding stairs – fling open his door and throw my own body into his bed. Tell him, “ _I am meant to awaken by your side. Only ever by your side._ ”

Instead I fall heavily onto my back, trying once again to catch my breath. I clutch his rosary in my fingers, imagining the beads are still warm from the heat of his skin. I want to know everything – how long I lay sleeping in his arms. Whether he dreamed. If he’d ever held another body through the night. Whether it pained him to leave. 

If what I heard just before succumbing to sleep was reality or dream.

And then, out of the roaring chaos churning in my mind, there is sudden clarity. Through the darkness of my plain ceiling there emerges an achingly familiar face – deep brown eyes glittering in the reflection from the stained glass, from the warm air of the old barn. 

“ _John,_ ” Gregory says softly, reaching down with one of his calloused hands. “ _You could love us both._ ”

The words from the past settle like a second skin beneath my own. I gaze up into his face for one last moment, heart in my throat, before he smiles sadly and fades away like a ghost, transforming back into weathered stone.

Everything is clear.

In the silent darkness I raise Sherlock’s rosary to my mouth, pressing the warm beads between my lips and across my tongue. A thrumming ache spreads between my legs as I taste the beads, knowing they had rested between his long, pale fingers.

Fire floods through my belly, pooling at my hips. I continue to kiss the rosary, nearly moaning at the feel of the warm beads sliding across my mouth. I feel myself growing thick and hard beneath my nightshirt between my legs, and though I do not touch myself, I arch my back just once, shivering at the press of the thin cloth against my erection.

And as I lie there, in sheets smelling of Sherlock Holmes’ skin, and with her rosary on my tongue, I close my eyes against the world, and say words that resonate deep in my chest – words of my beginning.

I whisper as I taste the ghosts of his fingers, “I love you both.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> List of new verses and Biblical references:  
> -Song of Solomon 4:13 "Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits."  
> -S of S 4:9 "You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace."  
> -S of S 5:2 "Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled."  
> -As a reminder, "the body of Christ" (and the lines leading up to that) comes from a (modernized) version of Holy Communion.  
> -S of S 4:15 "A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon."  
> -S of S 5:15 "His countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars."  
> -S of S 3:1 "By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth."  
> -Isaiah 43:1 "But now, this is what the LORD says- he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.""  
> -S of S 4:7 "You are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you."  
> -Golgotha: the site of Christ's crucifixion.  
> -The denial of Peter appears in all 4 the Gospels. Christ told Peter, before his crucifixion, that Peter would deny him 3 times before the rooster crowed. Peter vehemently denied this, however three times on the night of Christ's crucifixion, Peter claimed not to know him (presumably to escape a similar death, by announcing himself as a Follower). When he realizes what has come true, he cries bitterly and tears his robes.  
> -Luke 15:11-32: The parable of the Prodigal Son. A father has two sons. One is devoted and good and remains at home, the other leaves home and gets into a mess of trouble (gambling, poverty, illegal activities, sins, etc.). Years later, the prodigal son returns, and the father breaks all social protocol and runs through the streets to greet him and welcome him back. He holds a feast for the returned son. The good son is furious that he was never given a feast, but the father says it is more of a miracle to have the other son returned back to the fold.
> 
> -I promise you we'll find out what Penance Sherlock was given by Father Gromley. Also, Joan of Arc was definitely not the only person of faith in history, or in the Bible, who 'heard voices.' But Sherlock, in his relative isolation, and without initial access to an actual copy of the Bible, wouldn't have known this when he was young.
> 
> -You think I'm done with Gregory? Think again ...... :)
> 
> You're all fantastic, and praiseworthy, and make me want to shout hallelujah! THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for your enthusiasm for this fic. I adore writing it, and sharing it, and picturing our two favorite priests running about the moors with you all. Your comments are so deeply appreciated, as is the time you're all taking to read and enjoy this story.
> 
> Next time: a face from the past, a washing of feet, and a meeting in the middle of the night . . . .


	9. I Charge You by the Gazelles and by the Does of the Field

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back!
> 
> Thank you for your incredible patience while I took a break from this fic to write the longest damn thing I've ever written (oops). I feel very refreshed and cozy to be back in the world of priest!lock now.
> 
> *Heads up* that I have gone back and edited ALL previous chapters of this fic! No major details or plot points have changed, it was more just beta-work courtesy of having fresh eyes after a few months without looking at the fic. You could totally pick up here without reading the previous chapters again and be just fine, minus a tiny or inconsequential detail here or there. However, I will say that I believe the rest of the fic reads a lot better now, so, if you want a refresher, there are some pockets of new sentences and paragraphs hidden throughout which you can discover upon a re-visit of chapters 1-8. Also, just a general lessening of awkward sentences and/or errors. Whatever you decide to do, enjoy :)
> 
> For your religious-themed music with a heavy dose of celtic, give a listen to "Ubi Caritas" [HERE.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3gfIJeNojo/)  
> ^Thank you to jbaillier for reminding me this version of this song existed! "Ubi Caritas" is an antiphone (or Christian chant) associated with Christ's washing of the disciples' feet (the antiphone is sung on Maundy Thursday, also known by my personal favorite name 'Thursday of Mysteries,' which falls on the Thursday before Easter to commemorate Christ's action described in the Gospels).
> 
> For pure Celtic, listen to "An Cailín Bán" [HERE.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PGeiVB38io/)  
> ^The chief refrain of the above song can be translated as:  
> "she's the love of my heart  
> she's the pearl of the world  
> my love, my fair girl"

30th October 1927

 

I can hear him breathe.

The soft whoosh and pull of the puffs of air across his mouth, drifting out through his nose, the rise and fall of his cloaked chest. 

His lungs become a metronome for the words leaving my lips. He inhales, and my gentle teaching pours from my tongue, pools on the wooden seminar table, is soaked up by writing hands. 

He exhales, and I tremble. Bite my tongue as I remember the clack of his rosary against my teeth. The smell of his warm body soaked into my pillow in the light of dawn, more present than the ghost of Christ’s face pressed into the Holy Shroud.

He inhales.

Candlelight on the stone. The silken slip of her veil. The bleeding Somme’s hush of the smoking, grey dawn; silence in the aftermath of the screaming battle.

He exhales.

Warm, wet lips on my inner thigh. Her blessed voice: “ _We will remember thy love more than wine. . ._ ” A tender curl falling across my cheek as I drift through dreams.

Inhales.

“You are correct, Harrows,” I speak calmly, “in pointing out that the doctrine of Original Sin is indeed affected by the Great Schism. Now, Thomas, if you could build on that point, and provide some Scripture which gives context to either side –”

Exhales.

The secret of the taste of his mouth held in my breast. The heat of his body, radiating, emanating from where he calmly sits. The thrilling, awesome, terrifying knowledge that he has fallen apart beneath my hands, submitted himself to my simple palms on his skin, touched between my legs, moaned, heard me sigh the Lord’s Name in the curve of his ear. 

That he has seen me weep. That he has held me as I slept.

Inhales.

“. . .and you have all completed your Latin translation of Leo’s Tome, have you not?” I ask, in a gentle voice with my hands folded across my stomach. I look at the ordinands one by one around the seminar table, waiting for each of them to give a simple answer of, “Yes, Father.” 

I pause before the moment I will turn to look at Sherlock. To cherish it, to savor it, to prepare my heart and soul, as I used to pause and prepare myself before entering the House of the Lord.

I take a breath through my nose, then turn my head to look. He is the miracle of the Somme. The reason for the sunrise.

“And you, Holmes?” I ask. His name tastes like honey-coloured perfume in my mouth, the tannins and bright blackberry of the wine Christ produced at the feast of the wedding, surrounded by dance.

And I cannot be imagining it, cannot be wrong, when I think I see a brightness wash over his face as he looks into my eyes, and holds my gaze, and nods his silent answer. I cannot be hallucinating the way the dark teak wood and ancient stones are suddenly awash in the full spectrum of glorious colour; the rainbow after the Flood as it reflected in the waters across the Ark.

“Good,” I say. There is a freckle on the pale knuckle of his left thumb. I subtly move my own left hand into the pocket of my robes. Feel the smooth beads of his rosary, kept warm from my thigh. Know that he is watching me secretly touch them.

I shiver.

Exhales.

I want to lean across the old wooden table, with the edge of it cutting into the center my chest. I want to grasp his hands in mine, and hold tight to his bones, and whisper, “ _Call unto me, and I will answer thee._ ” 

And I want to watch him rise from his seat, and bathe the dark room with blazing light, and physically touch this secret in my breast with his hands – the wicked anticipation, and the glorious burden, and the mysterious, impossible knowledge of the sound of his voice, the taste of his sweet tongue. And he would whisper back, “ _John, I will show thee great and mighty things, secret things, which thou knowest not.”_

Inhales.

The bell tolls beyond the faded windows, signaling the end of lessons and the call for our next time of prayer. It rattles softly against the panes, and the scratch of every pen in the room halts. They look at me for an answer, hope hidden in their faces. They are all so young. . . still open and fresh. . .

“Go in peace,” I say, even though I’m days behind in our lessons. I can feel a soft smile creeping across the corners of my pale face. “The rare sunlight this afternoon is too precious for me to keep you indoors.”

A chorus of smiles erupts around the table. A multitude of “Thank you, Father’s” mixed with the harsh scrape of moving chairs and fluttering notes. 

I step back and watch the familiar flurry of robes and papers as the ordinands all pour out of the heavy door and into the sunlit halls. It is a scene I have watched hundreds of times before, and I have stood there every time, with my hands behind my back, watching them all burst out into the sunlight while my thigh throbs, and my lungs choke, and the stale indoor light settles over my shoulders like a cloak upon my skin.

But this time, just before the last robe slips out into the fresh air, I break the freeze over my body, and I whisper a single word into the void of the grey earth: “Holmes.”

Trumpets sound.

He immediately steps back inside, swinging the door shut behind him without hesitation. His black robes billow around his long legs. His calves.

He stands before me, frozen with one fingertip still on the door, and the room hums with silence after the click of the old latch. 

And, for the barest of seconds, fear courses through my body. Fear that he regrets falling asleep with me in his arms three nights past, or that he has called me by my name, or that he is currently alone in a room with the broken priest – the one who has touched him, who forced him to feel, who calls out in the night in terror, unable to control his tears in the dark. . .

But then, “ _All beautiful you are, my darling, there is no flaw in you,_ ” and though I expect it to be her voice sighing those words into my ear, it is his, my memory of his voice carried on the sea breeze by the cliffs.

He had said those words to me. Spoken them for John Watson to hear.

I take one step towards him, keeping my head high, and my entire body thrills when I barely need to lean my weight on my cane.

I lift up my palm into the empty room, reaching out for his skin. 

“Sherlock,” I say, with what feels like more emotion than when I cried out, “ _Amen_ ” in the moment of my ordination, the blessed seconds of eternity when I felt the full power of His Breath blow His glory across my spine, the promise of His mysteries carried upon my own unworthy shoulders.

Sherlock exhales all the breath in his lungs the moment he hears his name leave my lips. 

I wait, vibrating with anticipation, for the room to be bathed in blazing light. For the rainbow across the Ark, and the glory of the heavens, and for mighty wings to spread from the sturdy cedar of his spine, which will soar us up into the sky, out over the sea.

And yet, I watch transfixed as the silent student falls away from his bones. As he is transformed, not into Gabriel, but into Johnathan instead, standing on the ground with human feet, and a beating heart, and textured skin.

Standing, looking at me.

And in the same moment, I rise, and the gunsmoke clears from before my eyes. I feel my spine straighten, and my thigh stand strong, and the gentleness scatter away from my fingers. Banished, long-forgotten, and replaced by a steady hand. Young strength.

Sherlock crosses the room in two huge steps and grasps my hand with his. Instantly, my soul sings. His touch is the separation of water from air, the darkness which hovered over the waters before there was time, and which filled the emptiness with the world-shattering boom of “I AM.”

He is a man, flesh and bone, reaching out to hold my hand. To feel my skin.

“John,” he whispers, like rubies on his tongue. His voice is rough, and I remember he hasn’t used it since he slept in my bed. Since he whispered into my nape. . .

Quickly, with all haste, I pull him into my arms. Press his chest to mine. The warm weight of his body intoxicates me, envelopes me. It is more intimate than Christ’s knowledge of my unformed body in my mother’s womb. More precious than the tears Mary shed at the foot of the heavy cross. More unbelievable.

“I . . . I have missed you,” I whisper in a choked voice into his curls. I allow him to hear the emotion thick in my throat, burning in my lungs. I hold the back of his warm neck with my palm, and shiver as I press my cheek to his, as our faces brush.

His strong arms hold me closer, clutching at my back.

“ _A well of living waters,_ ” she whispers above our heads.

“And I, you,” he says back to me with his voice, his holy gift. It caresses the skin of my cheek, soothing and wet.

I hold him for a few more seconds, until my heart beats in holy tune with his. Precious time ticking down against the fateful clock. Then I finally reach up to pull his shoulders away from my own. I hold him slightly apart from me, just in case anyone should fling open the door. I know he understands.

And still, his fingertips reach up to trace the skin beneath my eyes. “You’ve been sleeping,” he whispers. His voice is the dew on the back of the doe.

“ _Sleep_ ,” he had told me, before I even knew the shape of his mouth against my own. Before I knew his first name. Before I knew we had met years ago.

And behold: I slept.

But before I can open my mouth to respond, footsteps echo out in the hallway, dangerously close to the door. A rumble of conversing voices pours through the cracks in the walls, and I imagine I can feel the ground shaking with the weight of them, the stone cracking in two.

Immediately, Sherlock’s fingertips fall from my face. I jump backward, and my chest screams at the loss. His grey eyes wash over with dark.

But just before my soul can succumb to the despair, before my shoulders can slump, and my spine grow weak. Just before I place the mantle of the ageing priest back upon my shoulders, I hear her voice, winding like silk through the open windows.

“ _Be of good courage, and I shall strengthen your heart,_ ” she whispers. Her voice pierces through the air. “ _All ye that hope in me._ ”

Before I realize what I am doing, I have Sherlock’s hand back in my own. I glance at the door, double-checking the latch is still shut. The voices have receded, and the trembling upon the stone has ceased. Her boldness fills me, until it seems that her veil itself has been draped across our fingers.

“Meet me tonight,” I plead with him. He looks down at me with wide eyes in shock. I place my thumb over the freckle on his hand and press. “Please, meet me tonight.”

For a moment, the earth goes still. Even our hearts cease to beat. I wait breathlessly for his answer, as the disciples waited at the bottom of the garden while Christ prayed. Lost in the moonlight. Fading into the dark. . .

And then, as impossibly holy as the Conception itself, Sherlock suddenly smiles. It blooms across his face, bursting from his lips. It drowns me in gold, pouring over my eyes, down my throat.

And, just as impossibly, I feel the same smile reflected across my own cheeks. “What is it?” I whisper.

And oh, oh God, it has been years since I heard my own voice sound like this – so light, and young, and right on the verge of laughter. A sea bird spreading its wings to burst out over the sea. The rays of the sun waiting to soar through the sky. 

It was long before the bombs, long before my collar, long before I walked away from Gregory beneath the boughs. The smile feels unfamiliar on my face now, pulling strangely at my lips, crinkling in the corners of my eyes.

I cherish it.

“ _He shall fill thy mouth with laughing,_ ” I had once spoken to a soldier in the trenches, “ _and thy lips with rejoicing. Praise the Lord, all the earth!_ ”

I well up with tears. After all these years, all these lifetimes, I had never fully realized that I had forgotten how to smile, to laugh. That I had not _rejoiced_.

His thumb catches a drop of wetness as it escapes to slide down my cheek. My smile grows, reflected in the glowing brilliance of his own face, a brighter light than I’ve ever known could exist in the dusty air of my seminar room.

“Those who look unto her become radiant,” he says, tracing my cheek. “Their faces are not ashamed.”

I blink slowly, and I delight in the warm trembling within my breast, the cord that pulls, pulls, _pulls_ me to him even though he is but inches away. 

“Sherlock,” I whisper, the purest sound, the colour of gold.

My lark soars up through the ceiling, up into the clouds, into the heavens.

He exhales. I feel his breath along the skin of my neck, snaking under my collar until it shivers beneath my robes.

“In the chapel at midnight,” he whispers.

I nod, then lean forward until my nose is almost touching his own. “At midnight,” I echo back.

His breath shudders across my lips. I can taste the heat of his mouth, his cup of earl grey, the pollen of the wildflowers from when he strolled across the moors. The finest oils of his skin.

I move closer, until my lips are just a breath away from his own, trembling with the ache to touch, pushing my own air straight into his mouth. Straight down into his lungs.

I hear the mighty force of his swallow. I place my fingertips on his waist.

“Would that I could kiss you,” Sherlock whispers, so softly that I feel the puffs of air against my lips more than I hear the words.

My throat grows warm and tight, and I let my eyes fall closed, shutting out the entire world, and all the heavens, and all the sea.

“ _Be of good courage, John,_ ” she whispers in her beautiful voice; in Gregory’s voice.

I steel my shoulders. She trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.

“Kiss me,” I breathe. I do not even recognize my own voice. The soft yearning in my words. The leftover ghosts of my weightless smile. 

A small sigh escapes his mouth, the faintest moan. I think he is still going to step back and pull away. That the danger will be too heavy, and the burden too fierce.

But then, as the Voice of the Lord came to Elijah in the whisper, after the chaos of the earthquake and the storm, as the whisper across the mountains, echoing across the sea, I stand within the walls of stone I once thought that I knew.

I stand there, and I feel Sherlock Holmes press his lips to my mouth.

They rest upon my lips, dry and soft. The flutter of a dove’s wing gracing the tip of my tongue. My hand grips at his waist, coursing with heat, the brush of his tender lips, the ecstasy of his embrace.

My cane clatters to the ground.

I kiss him. I kiss the man they all know as Holmes. I kiss his mouth, his breath, his wine . . .

“ _The Lord is my strength and my shield,_ ” I had once knelt to pray, in the final frantic minutes before the battle, with guns cocking around me, and when the black sky turned to Hell. 

“ _My heart trusts in him, and therefore I am helped,_ ” I had said, as the first bomb blasted, and the shattered earth screamed across the walls of the trenches. As the soldier beside me clung to my arm and begged for help. For salvation. For his mum. For his fair girl an ocean away.

“ _Therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth,_ ” I had whispered, moaned. I had cried out over the exploding fire: “ _And I shall praise Him with song!_ ”

Only I had not said “ _Him_ ”. 

No, not in the deathly grips of the bloodied mud, in the final seconds before my earthly death, in Hell. . .

In that desperate moment, I had opened my mouth and cried out, “ _her_.”

And now, as Sherlock’s lips brush one last time against my own, I realize that I have reached the culmination of “ _my heart rejoiceth._ ” 

Eleven years of limping through corridors, lying prostrate on stone, singing words before dawn. Eleven lifetimes of years.

And it is this, Sherlock’s kiss, which is the reason I first stumbled towards St. Sebastian’s with my arms outstretched. This, the reason He hovered over me on steaming shores, and brought me back my spirit, and placed the air in my lungs to live.

This. The gift of his kiss for me.

_Therefore, I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your true and proper worship._

His gift, his air, the living sacrifice of my own mouth. . .

Our lips echo softly as we finally pull apart. The sound of it tingles in my ears. I let the boldness overtake me, flowing through my limbs one last time, and I brush my nose across his own for one final moment. His ribs press against me – the ribs she knit together before the very dawn of time.

“All beautiful you are, my darling,” I whisper to him in a rough voice. I look into his soft, grey eyes. “There is no flaw in you.”

“John,” he shivers, and my chest squeezes with an ache, because I have now heard my name spoken more in one week than I have in fourteen years. 

Because he knows my name. . . because he has searched, and because he has known. . .

“Tonight,” I tell him, pouring assurance into my eyes. 

He looks at me, and I watch transfixed as the tip of his tongue licks his bottom lip. Then he nods, and I am awestruck as the mantle of ordinand falls once more across his shoulders. He takes a step away from me towards the door, disappearing into the shadows. I desperately take in one last look at the strong rod of his spine before it curves back into silence. Before his shoulders grow soft, and his lips fall closed, and the bend of his neck makes him look invisible and small, fading back into the stone.

The glow dims in his eyes.

And I think, as Sherlock slowly opens and shuts the door behind him, leaving me alone in the center of the empty room, that the transformation I had just witnessed was almost as awful, almost as wrong, as when they first placed the crown of thorns upon Christ’s bent head, and spat at him, “ _All hail, all hail the King of the Jews._ ”

-

Ten minutes later, I can still hear the ghost of him breathing in the silent room. Still taste the heat of his kiss. I have not moved.

The bell tolls again for prayer, shaking down in my bones. I quickly take a step forward in anticipation to see Sherlock again, to have his sleeve brush against mine as I sing, to breathe his same air. . .

And I fall.

My right side slams into the ground, and an embarrassing grunt escapes my throat. The stone stings. I blink hard, shocked, and gaze down at the floor, shaking as I push myself to my hands and knees.

I had forgotten about my leg. My thigh. My cane.

I had stood here in my home, the place where I have stood with my cane for eleven straight years. I had stood here, and kissed Sherlock Holmes, and then simply taken a step forward to go to prayers without thinking about it at all. Without the worn wood grasped in my hand. With no thoughts of the pain.

Shame burns in my throat, mixed with an immense, overwhelming flood relief that I had been alone, that no one had seen. 

For an eternal minute, I stay there down on the floor, studying the contrast between the skin of my hands and the rough wood and stone. Horror pulses like ice in the back of my mind – that Sherlock Holmes had just broken his Vow, and smiled, and kissed a man, and that that very same man cannot even walk without falling. Cannot radiate the same brilliance, or run with him across the moors, or kiss him without a cassock covering his skin. A tight collar at his throat.

Just when I finally try to push myself to standing, biting down hard on my tongue against the shooting pain up my thigh, the door before me creaks open, bathing me in sunlight from outside.

I freeze, and then frantically look up from my hands to see another pair of black priest’s shoes.

“Heavens, Father!” I hear. I look up from the shoes just in time to see Father Barry sinking to his knees, concern blasted across his face. “Are you hurt? Have you fallen? Here, now, let me help you – we need to find your cane. . . shall I call for --?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” I say, trying to keep the sudden rush of venom out of my voice. I know that it’s only there to try and cover up my fear – fear that I’m suddenly face to face with the man I’ve been avoiding within the stone walls, ever since I glimpsed his eyes behind a falling curtain days ago.

I sway out of reach of his hands and once again try to stand, but the second I put any pressure on my right leg, fiery pain like I haven’t felt in years shoots up my thigh, burning in my bones and bringing fresh tears to my eyes.

Father Barry’s hands are on my shoulders. I cannot breathe. Cannot think.

“There now, easy and let me help you to your feet,” I hear him saying, distantly through a fog. “We’ve just lost the grip of our cane is all. Just need to get ourselves off this hard floor . . .”

I swallow over a wail. I’ve heard him speak to five-year-olds this way.

I know I have no choice, and so I let him guide me to my feet with his hands gripping my sides, heaving me up beneath my arms before gently walking me back into a chair. Immediately, my body sings with a flash of heat, of longing.

It is the chair where Sherlock had been sitting. Where he sits. . .

“. . . happened? Shall I have Father Colmas call for a doctor?”

I look up from my feet and try to catch up in my mind with what Father Barry has been saying. I hate myself in this moment, with an intensity more fierce than when the Lord God struck down locusts upon the hot Egyptian soil.

“No, no doctor,” I say, struggling to keep my voice gentle and calm. I rub my hand over my thigh, trying to soothe the trembling muscle – the one which I had once looked down and seen ripped to shreds outside my own skin. 

Which I had seen Sherlock Holmes kiss.

“Just a fall,” I say. “I’ve no idea . . . I must not have seen an abnormality in the floor.” I try for a smile, even though I know it fails. “Just need to catch my breath for a moment.”

I almost laugh at the quickly hidden relief that passes over Father Barry’s face. Relief that he can wash his hands of this, that he doesn’t have to stay involved and go coordinate for a doctor. He nods at me, then leans back against my desk with his hands behind him, looking around the seminar room as if he’s never seen it before. We sit in silence, broken only by the rasp of my palm against the cloth over my thigh.

My cane is still on the floor, screaming at me, like one of the long nails that pierced Christ’s skin, dripping with blood.

Then, out of nowhere: “Tell me, is Brother Holmes having an issue with his coursework?”

Oxygen leaves the room. The entire earth sharply tilts beneath my weak feet.

My lips burn.

I sit back in my chair to force myself to relax and press my full palm against my thigh, trying to keep any shaking out of my hand. 

“Not at all,” I say, surprised when my voice comes out steady. “If anything, he exceeds expectations in his essays, as I’m sure you all have also seen.” I pause and swallow. “Why do you ask?”

Father Barry gives me a very long look. So long, I think that maybe the end of the world is near, that the floods and famine of Revelation have already taken place outside our door.

“No reason,” he finally says; his voice is too light. “I simply noticed he stayed back in your room just now, behind the other ordinands after lecture. Since he obviously wouldn’t be asking you a question, I just idly wondered. . .”

For the first time in weeks, I suddenly hear His voice boom in my chest: “ _For God doth know that in the day ye eat the forbidden fruit thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil. . ._ ”

Wildly, I want to stare Father Barry in the face, and ask him if he desires to be like Eve herself. If he desires to probe into that which is not known to him, and be lead to sin by his curiosity, and taste the forbidden fruit, condemning himself to death. 

The venom of the words terrifies me. They burn in my chest more forcefully than the Lord’s prayer on the banks of the Somme, when I had thought that only the words from my lips could save the lost souls dying in the blood-red mud.

“Ah, of course,” I hear myself say. “No, no issue. . .”

“ _Lying lips are abomination to me_ ,” I hear Him hiss.

“ _Johnathan!_ ” she cries out.

“I was simply returning his marks to him, from his exposition on a chosen Saint. He missed lecture that day to walk to St. Ignatius’ to give Confession.”

My hand around his hip. His breath across my tongue. . .

“Ah yes, I see,” Father Barry says with a rush of air. The ice cracks in the room, and he pushes himself up from my desk with a whoosh of robes. 

I watch him, still frozen in the chair, as he slowly begins to walk to the door. He clasps his hands behind his back. “Care will kill the cat, is it not so?” he says back to me, a self-deprecating smile oozing across his mouth. 

I dig my fingernails into my thigh. “Of that sin, I believe we are all guilty,” I say back, as if I’m joking about something spoken during Recreation hour. As if I am a person who jokes.

He pauses with his hand on the door. “You’ll be alright?” he asks, glancing down at my thigh. I watch his eyes quickly scan over the fabric, just like I’ve seen them all do dozens of times. Trying to ascertain what it must look like, how horrific the scarring must be, what the signature of a bomb looks like etched into skin.

“Yes,” I say. “I just need a few more moments of rest, then I’ll join you all at Vespers.”

He stares at me. “I’ll pass on to Father Colmas your reason for being tardy,” he says, in a voice that sounds far too serious for the situation.

“Of course, thank you.”

I wait for him to leave, wait with my heart pounding in my chest. I watch his fingers tighten on the handle of the door, watch his body shift to push it open.

But he looks back at me over his shoulder, and he whispers to me, in a voice like breaking glass, “I will pray for you, Watson. Know that I pray for you. For your . . . recovery.”

I nearly gasp at the pained look painted across his face. It is agonized, and wary, and dripping with sadness. It is intense, piercing worry, and I find myself desperately wondering for whom the worry is meant.

“As I pray for you,” I hear myself whispering back, just as he glances once last time down at my leg resting uncomfortably on the wooden chair. 

Then he bows his head and leaves in a rush of air so quickly I could almost believe it had all been a dream.

The moment he shuts the door behind him, and I am truly alone, a startled moan escapes my chest. I drop my head in my hands.

I realize, in the fresh silence, why Father Barry had looked like that standing in the door.

He had not been worried for me, or for my soul, or for my leg. He had not been worried whether I will apply the Prodigal Son to my own life. No, Father Barry’s worry was not meant for me at all.

I realize, with a sudden horror that bathes my vision in grey, with the agony of the cross, that it was meant for Sherlock Holmes.

It was for Holmes, because he saw me stroke my wicked fingers across Holmes’ arm. Because he saw me speak to him, and _with_ him, whilst he was simply hidden behind a curtain indoors, hoping to catch a glimpse of the beautiful moors beyond. 

-

When I finally limp into Vespers in the last five minutes of prayer, no one’s eyes even stray up from their prayer books to look. No lips break their song. Father Harrows is effortlessly leading them all in my stead, as if there had never even been a Father Watson who used to sing.

My cane echoes harshly against the stone, even as I try to muffle the sound. My leg still screams at me from my fall, and I know I must look on the brink of death, on the verge of collapse.

I take my place at the end of the line, closest to the door, then bow my head and try to bathe myself in the glorious air, in the hush of her voice, in the stillness of her holy love.

I feel nothing.

Before I can even so much as open my lips to join the chorus, I am suddenly aware that eyes are on me, blazing onto my face. 

And I know, without needing to think, that the eyes will be cool grey.

I take a deep breath, then look up slowly from my feet. Sherlock is halfway down the line, in the place where he would have been standing across from me if I were not late. 

When our eyes meet, I nearly drop to my knees. They are huge, and fixed on me, and brimming over with concern. One pair of eyes amid a sea of bowed-heads. A sea of black hoods. 

He glances down at my leg, but it is different from how everyone else does it; it is miles away. It is the water flowing from the rock for the Israelites stranded in the desert. It is the manna upon the barren ground. The calming of the storm.

When he looks back up at my face, I give him a look that I hope means that I’m alright. That he needn’t worry. That I detest and loathe the fact that we are so far apart.

He bites his bottom lip, and his tongue quickly licks over the skin. His eyes are a question, a beautiful longing, the dripping oils Christ used to wash the Disciples’ feet.

I fill my own eyes with warmth. I let my gaze stray to the beautiful Virgin, listening quietly to our humble prayers filling the chapel.

“ _Of course I will still meet you tonight,_ ” my eyes say, and I know in my soul that he understands. “ _At the end of the world, I would meet you. In the highest of the heavens, and in the depths of sea, in the midst of the bombs, I would meet you there._ ”

-

The earth is hushed and black when I gently creak open my chamber door. Moonlight spills into my room across my feet, dancing along the folds of my robes, rushing through my hair.

I stand still in the doorway, and I take a moment to relish the thick, soft silence. Never, in all my years in this place, have I ever left my room in the middle of the night without nightmarish screams still clinging to the corners of my mind. Without fear churning in my gut, or ghostly blood dripping across the stone, clawing at my robes, making my clammy palms sweat.

But now, it is only silence. The stillness that comes from the blanket of starlight over the earth. The cool stone sleeps, and the wind nestles in the leaves, and far away, through a comforting dream, the ocean kisses the base of the cliffs in a soothing rush, mimicking the slow, calm beat of my own heart.

Her words float down to me from the velvet clouds as I tiptoe through the corridors, leaning on my cane as I drift on silent feet.

“ _Be still,_ ” she whispers, and it sounds so much like my mother, so close to her lost voice. . . “ _Be still, and know that I am God,_ ” she sighs.

“The Lord is in her Holy Temple,” I immediately say back. My voice fills the empty corridors as I wind my way through, softening the harsh stone, warming the night sky. “Let all the earth keep silence before her.”

“ _John,_ ” she moans, filled with love, filled with emotion.

I glimpse the chapel. The faintest light from a flickering candle hums behind the stained glass.

“The Lord is in her Holy Temple,” I say again, unable and unwilling to keep the utter awe out of my voice, the delight that I have finally found the right words for her to hear.

I grasp the heavy door in the stillness and take one final moment to prepare my heart, then I look once over my shoulder to peer back into the dark. 

I see nothing. No footsteps in the corridors. No white faces behind window panes. 

And so, with a warm throat, I pull open the door, bathing myself in her outstretched arms, in the House of the Lord. I shut the door behind me, and I take a single step into the chapel. The tap of my cane fills the room with its sound. I hold my breath. My eyes adjust to the dim golden light.

Immediately, Sherlock is up on his feet from where he’d been kneeling before the Virgin. The light reflecting from her marble veil bathes his skin with a moonlit glow. He pushes his curls back from his eyes, and his robes swish around his ankles. His feet are bare.

“John,” he breathes into the silence. His voice rushes down my throat, beneath my robes, inside my skin.

I am overwhelmed – at the simple fact that I have been given the gift of his voice. That he allows me to hear him. That the Mother of God and I are among the intimate group of those chosen, that she is the heavenly witness to the fact that I am alive, that His Breath of Life was exhaled back into my lungs on the bloody shores, and that I was brought to this place eleven years ago, weak and trembling, all so that I could stand here now, in the middle of the night, and watch a man rise to his feet and call me by my name.

“My darling,” I whisper. I hold out my hand.

He rushes to me. Across His House, in her holy presence, he rushes to my earthly form, holding out his arms until we collide in a breathless embrace. His scent overwhelms me. The human warmth of his skin.

I want to stand there and hold him forever, until the end of days, until the end of time. I want to be holding him when Christ arrives on earth to gather the faithful, and for Christ himself to witness Sherlock Holmes in my arms, the reason He brought me back to life.

My _sanctus. . ._

But Sherlock pulls away, and he grips my shoulders hard with his palms.

“What happened to you?” he asks in a rush. “Earlier, when you were late, I could see you were in pain –”

I kiss him. Before he can even finish the words on his tongue, I lean forward, and bring down his face with my hand, and I kiss him. The power of it rushes through my veins, the boldness like a balm across my thigh. That one singular moment, running through the hellfire and smoke, when I had felt an odd rush of energy, of _excitement_ , in the middle of the war. When I had felt utterly alive.

He hums against my mouth, and his hands move up to caress my neck and jaw.

Behind him, I can feel her power: “ _In the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance,_ ” she calls; she swoons. “ _Let me hear thy voice, for sweet is thy voice. . ._ ”

I brush my thumb across his cheek and run my tongue over my lips, tasting the wetness from his mouth. As if doing so isn’t something I vowed before Christ to give up for life.

I feel his hum vibrate against my own chest. “I’m alright,” I whisper.

When he frowns, I tilt his face down, so I can kiss the wrinkle between his brows. “I just stumbled after you left –”

“You stumbled?”

I cannot keep the warmth from my eyes, warmth that he sees right through me, that he somehow knows. “I fell,” I admit.

His eyes gaze off into the distance, concern still dripping from the corners of his mouth, pooling over his full lips. “But how --?”

“I had . . . I had dropped my cane,” I say. “Before, when we were . . .” I clear my throat. Somehow, in some way, it feels immense that I am about to say the word ‘kiss’ inside His house. That she is about to hear me admit . . .

“When we kissed,” I force myself to go on. I feel him shiver beneath my hands. “After you left, I . . . I just forgot about it. I went to go meet you all for prayers.”

His face falls. He holds me closer to his chest. “I should have realized, I should have turned back to pick it up –”

“Hush,” I whisper. I bring one of his hands to my lips and kiss the back of it, trailing my lips across the warm skin. I dread what I am about to say next, as if the words themselves will somehow bring hellfire upon us both, will drag us immediately down to Hell.

“Father Barry is the one who found me,” I finally say, and even I can hear the warning bell of terror in my voice. “He . . . Sherlock, he – he knows something. He suspects. What I tried to tell you the other night, and he glimpsed us through the window when we were coming back from our walk.” The panic rises up within me, an overflowing well, the claws at my robes. “He is worried for you,” I pour out, gripping onto the front of his robes. “He is concerned. He thinks that I . . . that I am . . . and he has hinted –”

“You have not harmed me,” Sherlock cuts in and says. But I cannot hear him, cannot pause to comprehend.

“We have to be more careful. He could have walked in, anyone could have seen. He knows . . . and the Prodigal Son. . . and he asked why I had kept you behind in my room –”

“John,” he says, and the power of his voice knocks the rest of my panicked words from my lungs. I stare up at him, panting, desperate for her hands upon my shoulders.

“ _Fear not_ ,” she weeps, she calls out to me through the dark.

“John, you have not harmed me,” he says again; he pleads. There is a wetness to his voice, a depth I have not heard on his lips since he looked at me through the thundering storm and cried out, “ _I want to speak!_ ”

My response catches in my throat. I suck in a desperate breath. There, in the flickering candlelight, I look up and witness the emotion on his face, the blazing in his grey eyes, the urgent line of his jaw. A single tear falls from his eye, gliding down his cheek until it splashes onto the stone.

And I want to think, in that moment, of something to compare his face to in my mind. Some way to use His Words to encapsulate the way Sherlock is looking at me now. To describe his beauty.

But I cannot.

I cannot think of His Words, or His histories, or His songs. I can only see Sherlock, gripping me tightly, desperately whispering, “ _John, you have not harmed me,_ ” in his rushing voice.

The shroud of dread over my eyes suddenly lifts, for the first time since I had looked up in a doorway and seen Sherlock Holmes’ eyes. For the first time since I had clutched him to my breast upon the moors as he wept in my arms, right after crying out in pleasure beneath my hands, right after gasping out my name.

“ _Oh, how much better is thy love than wine!_ ” she sings, echoing across the chapel, rattling the stained glass.

“Mo eala bhàn,” I whisper. 

Instantly, his face clears. Breath rushes from his mouth, filling up my own lungs.

“My beautiful one,” he breathes, and then his warm mouth is once again upon my own. He gasps against me, caressing my lips and tongue. He breathes his youth into my bones, his spirit into my flesh, his life into my chest, strengthening my hidden soul, my thigh. 

And I . . . I give him those most hidden pieces of my soul. My secrets. My voice. I give him the part of my spirit which had refused to lie dying in the bleeding mud. I give him that sunrise over the Somme. My final breaths. My last words. My first “amen.”

I give him that loneliness I had felt looking out over the sea, in those fateful last moments before he walked into my seminar room for the first time.

I give him the day I walked away from Gregory, and the day I held his desperate letter in my blood-stained hands. I give him my mother’s voice, Christ’s tears, and the bombs that rip through my dreams in the middle of the night.

I give him my breath. The human beat of my pulse.

His kiss grows wet and hot across my mouth. He moans into me, and he lets me press my tongue between his lips, tasting the inside of him, his air, his words. The intimacy of it shoots down my spine and settles between my hips. Our caressing lips echo their sighing song up to the rafters, wafting around her veil, more beautiful than any prayers that have ever been sung in this place in His Name.

I pant into his mouth. “How I wanted to wake up in your arms the other morning,” I tell him, shaking with the force of my own words. He clings to me as I whisper, “How I wanted to hold you in the dawn.”

He sighs into my mouth. “John . . .”

A sudden desire overwhelms me – one that feels like it has been waiting for decades within my chest to be finally known. It tingles in my veins and guides my steps. Before I can question it, I run my lips along his jaw towards his ear. “Come and sit down,” I whisper, even though I know that we’re alone.

He nods, and I can feel his breath brush the side of my face. He takes my hand, and I follow him down the center of the chapel. The aisle where I have stood before her glory hundreds of mornings before. The sound of both of our breathing covers over the ugly tap of my cane.

She beckons to us from her altar, bathed in light and shining. Sherlock turns back to me when we finally reach her feet, then goes to help me down to sit alongside him on the stone steps of the altar, but I squeeze his fingers and pull back.

“Wait,” I tell him. He looks at me confused as I try to walk steadily over to the corner of the chapel. I can feel his eyes on me as I grab the small bowl of water, left over from Vespers and Compline earlier that day. I swirl it, just once, and the oils of lavender and myrrh instantly fill my nose, flooding my lungs.

When I turn to walk back to him, the air is punched from my chest. He sits enthroned before the Blessed Virgin, bathed in gold from the candle. His robes pool down across the stairs, and his skin is the light of the stars. His eyes are the rushing waters that carried the baby Moses away to safety. That kept the wicker basket safe and whole among the clutching reeds.

And he is here, in the middle of the blessed night, with me.

I hold his gaze as I walk towards him carrying the bowl, and I watch as slow understanding blooms behind his eyes. When I go to kneel at his feet, though, he reaches out stop me. 

“You shouldn’t. You do not need to –” he starts to say, but I settle down on my knees before him and place the bowl of water at his feet.

I look up into his eyes. “I know I don’t need to –”

He leans forward to hold my arm, trying to pull me back to standing. “But your leg, you’ll be in pain –”

I catch both of his hands in mine and bring them to the center of my chest. She hovers on the tip of my tongue like a pearled drop of honey. I drink in the candlelight flicker of his piercing eyes.

“Let me,” I whisper, somehow more holy and beautiful than the word “ _amen_.” More blessed between my lips.

An emotion passes over his face, the quiet awe in Adam’s eyes when he saw that God had used the very rib from his flesh to create Eve. He holds my gaze for another long moment, shimmering in the silence, and then he leans back where he sits on the pedestal, and slowly moves his bare feet towards my lap.

I do not hesitate. In the glory of the stained glass, within the shroud of the incense smoke, beneath the holy power of her gaze, I place my palms on the bare skin of Sherlock’s feet in His house and stroke.

He is woven silk.

He sucks in a breath. I rub my thumb along the porcelain bone of his ankle, and he quietly moans.

I shiver as the sound of it travels along my spine. It tingles in my thigh, warming the tight muscle to make it young and loose. His feet are stark white against the black of my cassock, against the rough stone of the holy floor, and her candlelit marble paints the delicate veins with soft gold.

And as I dip my hands into the holy water by my lap, as the lavender and myrrh arise to fill the chapel with their perfume, as I tilt my cupped palm until a trickle splashes down onto the top of his ankle, I lick my lips, and I open my mouth to speak with a quivering hum:

“And Jesus saith unto Nicodemus, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God’.”

He sighs beneath my hands, and his toes arch against my wrist. I pour another palmful of cool water over the tendons of his feet, watching the perfumed droplets trail over his lavender veins, between his soft toes.

When I look up to see his face, his heavy eyes are wet.

“ _Your eyes are doves,_ ” she whispers, words dripping with golden myrrh, trailing down like petals over her marble lips. She weeps.

“The wind bloweth where it listeth,” I speak, rumbling deep in my chest at the warm echo of my voice – my voice, which it seems I have never before heard within these holy stone walls, within the precious stained glass. “And thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.”

I watch him lick his full lips, aching deep in my breast at the sight. And then, without hesitation, as if it is an action I have done countless times before, I bend my face down towards the floor, cradling his legs in my lap, and I gently press my mouth to the freshly perfumed arch of his foot.

He gasps. The holy water covering his skin clings to my lips.

“O God, be merciful unto me, for my soul trusteth in thee,” he cries in a breathless voice. He closes his eyes, then bares his throat to gaze up at the rippling rafters.

I drag my lips along his wet skin, fresh and clean from my hands. “As the wind bloweth, so is everyone who is born of the Spirit,” I say, murmuring into the blood in his veins.

His breath shudders from his open lips, and I watch his pale throat move as he swallows. Her veil covers over his starlit skin. “Yea,” he breathes, and the warm stream of his breath envelopes my skin, “in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast.”

My nails caress the bone of his ankle. My cheek rests on the soft skin of his heel. His skin glistens in the candlelight from the holy water I have poured over him with my hands, and the soft, wet droplets echo against the stone when they fall effortlessly from the curves of his bones. I press another kiss to the top of his foot, holding him in my hands, and the sound of my wet lips is mightier than all the angels at the Heavenly gates.

She sighs, and the silk of her garments hovers over our bodies, keeping us hidden, keeping us warm. “ _John,_ ” she pleads, “ _Jesus, having loved His own who were in the world, having loved them until the very end . . ._ ”

I let the wetness shake in my voice as I lift the corner of my cassock to dry his washed feet, cradling them in my lap. “For God. . .” I start to speak, but my throat closes up. I gaze up to Sherlock for strength, illuminated by the Mother of God and protected within her sight.

“We shall cry unto God most high,” he tells me, shivering at my palms on his skin. “Unto God that performeth all things for us, we shall cry.”

The burning in my throat lifts.

I brush my black robes of ordination over this human skin I have kissed, cleansing his body with the set-apart cloth. Cleansing, as Christ knelt and washed those whom He loved until the end. . .

“For God so loved the world,” I say softly. I lean down to kiss the tender spot on the inside of his ankle. “So _loved_ , that she gave up her only born son.” 

Wildly, filled with power, I gently push up the bottom of his robes with my hand. I drag the woven hem up the muscle of his shin and calf, revealing his bare leg to the chapel air. I caress the soft bed of his hair with my lips, and kiss my way up his strong calf, leaving a wet trail. “That whosoever believeth in Him,” I whisper, “shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”

His body trembles beneath my gliding mouth. I feel the hitch of his breath deep down in my bones. “She shall send from heaven,” he whispers towards the cross, towards her marble cheeks, “and save me from the reproach of him that would swallow me up.”

My lips reach the crook of his delicate knee. I push his robes up to his thighs, so they pool in black, silken clouds about his hips, dripping down over the blessed altar. I lick the bones of his smooth knee, caress his calf against my breast, brush my cheek across the velvet hair of his thigh.

He whimpers at the kiss of my mouth to his bare flesh.

She can see.

“For she sent not her Son into the world to condemn the world,” I say softly, with my lips tracing his skin, moving higher onto his firm thigh, and he gently parts his legs, until the warm smell of his secret body washes over to surround my skin. His thighs enclose me. “But that the world through him might be saved,” I breathe.

I kiss his inner thigh. Hold his sturdy hips with the strength of my hands.

“ _The joints of thy thighs are like jewels,_ ” she gasps and moans.

He throws back his head as my tongue meets his skin. I sigh into his body, and his fingertips caress the back of my warm neck.

“Selah,” he whispers, he cries, he groans. “John. . .”

I dip my palms back into the bowl of water and bring them up over his bared thighs, quivering like the milk of the stars against the dark stone. Moonlight flashes through the stained glass, rippling across the canvas of his skin. The Holy Night.

And I gaze at him, man to man, as I pour the water from my hands across his naked legs, washing the warm skin of his body with my humble fingers. I wash him, and he lets me.

I catch my breath. “He that believeth in Him is not condemned,” I say, and my voice sounds stronger, more mighty, than it had even in the midst of the storm along the shore. Even over the bombs.

He looks down at me between his thighs with a wretched, beautiful pain. Christ rising from the garden, knowing Judas was behind him, preparing to kiss.

“My soul is among lions,” he whispers in a breaking voice. My heart stills. I run my hands up his thighs and silently plead with him to look only at me.

His voice rattles deep in his chest. “I lie even among them that are set on fire,” he rasps, “even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword.”

For a blinding second, I see Father Barry’s face behind a windowpane in my mind, burning with hellfire and piercing through my chest with his gaze.

But then she appears, resplendent, hovering over the endless rocky shore, the shore of the Somme. 

“ _You can love us both,_ ” she pleads with me in her beautiful voice, in my own younger voice. She extends her soft hand to me over the bed of Sherlock’s curls. My eyes fill with her power, the strength woven into her long hair.

“ _Fear not_ ,” she commands, a beautiful harp over the sleeping earth.

I reach out for Sherlock’s hand and hold it in my own, then press the tips of his fingers to my wet lips. I can smell the straw I once picked from Gregory’s soft hair. The ink which Sherlock had once used to write me the gift of his name.

My heart pounds, and long-forgotten words suddenly pour from my lips. “A chuisle mo chroí,” I tell him in a voice I have never heard come from my own mouth. A voice from my mother, from my home, from the deepest longing in my soul.

David’s soul to Johnathan’s own.

“A chuisle mo chroí,” I say again, as his eyes widen and glow in understanding. “For God so loved the world. . .” I whisper to his open lips. “So _loved_. . .”

And then, in the heavy silence, I drag the hem of his robes up over his hips, revealing the hidden parts of his skin where I had earlier felt he was wearing no other clothing beneath his robes. I bare the part of him I know is flush, thick and warm from the touch of my hands. Bare it so his beautiful desire is revealed in His house.

In her sight.

I do not look down. Instead I gaze up into the light of his face, from where I kneel on her altar between his firm thighs. I look up into his eyes, and I swallow over the gathering desire in my mouth, and I wait. 

His eyes are the birth of Christ. The candlelight whispers praises in her name.

“Ghille mear,” he breathes. He reaches out to place his thumb upon my lower lip. He does not move to cover himself back up with his robes. I can smell him.

“Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens,” he finally says to me in a calm voice. It warms the marrow within my bones and pulls my fingers towards his hips. “Let thy glory be above all the earth.”

“Mother of God,” I moan, then I tear my gaze from his eyes, and I allow myself to look down.

I see him, thick and rising up towards my lips, strong and solid among the lilies, the great cedars of Lebanon.

My eyes water at the holy sight. “I rose up to open to my beloved, and my hands dropped with myrrh,” I breathe out in a mighty rush. “My fingers with sweet smelling myrrh.”

“Oh, John,” he rumbles above me. His fingertips quiver as they trace my brow beneath my hair. He pants, “Selah. . .”

My lips hover over his hot skin. 

_Kyrie eleison. . ._

Then I taste him.

The world goes hushed. 

All I can hear is the awesome breath in my lungs, the groaning suck of the pull of my mouth across his body, the desperate, keening cry that flies up out of his throat and across the sea.

The sigh through my nose that fans down across his thighs. The kiss of my lips.

And behold: there, kneeling in the moonlight, with lavender dancing in the air, with every pair of eyes on the vast earth asleep, Sherlock’s body trembles beneath me, and I moan as his cock glides in over my tongue. My soul aches at the heat of his skin in my mouth, at the hard, wet, pulsing length of him stretching my lips, the rush of wine down my lungs, the solid weight of him on my tongue.

And it is more beautiful than my dreams, more impossibly real and whole, more righteous than the dry land separating from the depths of the sea, more holy . . .

“My heart is fixed,” he cries out in a shaking, wet voice. His thighs clench around my shoulders. “O God, my heart is fixed. I will sing and give praise.”

My own body grows heavy and warm at the rumbling moan of his voice, the mightiest rush of the waves, the Voice of God in the steady wind. I can feel myself growing, thickening beneath my cassock. It hums between my legs, pooling like fire in my hips. . .

I grasp the base of his cock with my palm, thrilling at the hot steel, then I bow to him; I slowly bob my head.

Myrrh down my throat. Angels on my skin. His fingers through my hair as he gasps at the stars, flanked by the white of her veil.

O God, you are my God . . . _oh, God_. . .

I open to him. My love, my dove. I open for my beloved. There I will give you my ---

“Awake up, my glory,” he moans above me, breathing the fresh warmth of his words down my spine – more awesome, more powerful than when I had knelt and pledged Him my living days.

Sherlock’s hand caresses my neck as I suck freely on his cock, pulling him into my mouth, drinking his skin across my tongue. He gasps, “Awake, psaltery and harp! I myself will awake early.”

I hum deeply with my wet lips over his hardness, then slowly pull off. I flick my hungry tongue across his wet tip, shivering at the burst of taste, the salt of the earth, the light which cannot be hidden, the pomegranates in bloom. . .

“Sherlock,” I whisper. I do not even recognize my own voice. Do not recognize the rumble, or the desire, or the _want_ that echoes up to the ceiling, mixing with the ghosts of eleven years of my voice used to sing His Name.

I look up dazed into his eyes, and I can feel the liquid from my mouth dripping over my lip, gliding slowly down my chin.

He is so hard, so flushed and wet, and my own cock pulses and aches . . .

He blinks down at me heavily, as if coming up out of a fog. The sigh of his throat is the well of living waters, the promise of the Holy Ghost, the perfume of her neck.

“I will praise thee among the people,” he whispers to me, and suddenly I am back on the earth, back on my knees, enclosed by his thighs.

I am not David, not an angel, not the Song of Solomon.

I am John.

“ _Oh_ ,” I breathe, and he swallows hard in the fragile silence. 

His hand is upon my cheek. “I will sing to thee among the nations.”

“We will run and not be weary,” I hear myself whisper back, and then I bend down, I prostrate myself at his feet, and I cry out as I enclose his cock in my lips, as I swallow his hot skin once more down my throat. I taste him, moan, suck, and taste. . .

“For thy mercy is great unto the Heavens,” he calls out. She wails at the glory of his voice. “And thy truth unto the clouds. . . O God. . . _selah_. . .”

I grasp his thighs as his pulsing body stretches my lips, as I pull him, lap at his skin with my tongue, as I shiver at the weight of him in my throat, the gift of the liquid at his tip. He presses inside me, rising up with his hips to meet my mouth.

He grasps my hair, and his thighs fall open from my shoulders. I look up with bleary, awestruck eyes to see his head tip back towards the Virgin, the long column of his beautiful throat, the pillar of cloud in the desert night.

He pushes my head down, and I swallow him, I groan. . .

“Be thou exalted, O God, above the Heavens,” I hear him cry. He whimpers as I suck him, roll him across my tongue. The thick and dripping and wet body of Christ. . .

“Selah. . . _oh_ , John. . . . selah –”

I hum into his body, pumping his cock across my tongue. Gulping down the scent of his thighs. Begging for his wine.

“Let thy glory be above all the earth,” he keens. He is panting, echoing through the quiet church. I hear his toes curl against the stone.

“ _Feel_ ” I hear her beg him. Her hands are upon his shoulders. “ _Sherlock, feel. . ._ ”

I groan as I suck him, faster, thick in my lips. . .

“Selah!” he cries unto the heavens, the breath of creation, the birth of the sky.

He pulses down my throat, liquid heat filling up my belly. I close my eyes, savor him, cherish his thickness, the blessed warmth.

_There is one God, and One Spirit, one Lord, and one faith, and one baptism. . . One God of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. . . in you all --_

I swallow the warm honeycomb of his being down my throat. The fruit of his garden. The Promised Land of milk and honey.

_In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost._

“ _Amen,_ ” she whispers.

When he pulls his body out from between my lips, I gasp, and my eyes fly open, and I nearly moan out loud in agony at the loss. I reach for him, desperate, searching as a lost man in the roaming dark, but then. . .

_sanctus_

. . .and his lips are suddenly upon my own. The rushing flow of his oxygen bursting into my lungs. The gentle caress of his mouth as he joins me kneeling on the stone and crushes me to his chest. 

His release still coats my tongue, warm honey pooling in my mouth, and in a wild rush of madness, of trembling awe from above, I gently part his lips with my tongue, and push some of his wine back into his own mouth.

He tastes himself, mixed with the perfume of my own lips.

He gasps. His hands clutch me harder than I’ve ever felt another man’s touch in my life. Harder than the soldiers in the mud. Harder than His hands bringing me back to life.

I want to tell him of Gregory. Of my mother’s last words before she closed her eyes. I want to tell him of my doubts, of the lonely nights, of the way the small size of my bed fills me with unbearable grief. I want to ask him if he has ever been to the misty shores of France. What his penance was for loving Jeanne d’Arc. If he sees her marble eyes blink through our prayers in the dawn. 

I hold his face in my hands and tremble at the waft of his scent clinging to my palms and fingers. I drown in his kiss, Jonah willingly falling deeper into the sea. I roll back my head as he plants wet and open kisses across my jaw, down the line of my throat, pooling in the crook of my neck and shoulder. I do not even remember when his fingers released the buttons of my robes. Cannot remember when he bared my own skin, when he pulled off my collar, when he freed my lungs.

And it is then, as my gasping voice echoes freely up to the rafters, as his tongue traces the vibrations of my moans, as we hold each other; it is then, as his palm reaches for my own cock tenting the fabric of my robes, that I realize that I want to remain like this, hard and warm.

I catch his wrist with my hand and hold him back from grasping me through my cassock. I open my eyes to gaze into his, the first hints of sunrise that had broken through the gun smoke over the Somme. I stroke my thumb across his skin, finding the freckle on his knuckle by feel alone.

“Let me sleep like this,” I say to him, and I shiver at the rough way my voice rasps out of my throat. “I want . . . I want to dream of you. To keep you with me, your warmth.”

His eyes pool black, and his breath shivers across my face. He traces the outline of my cock with the tips of his fingers. I delight in the ecstasy of remaining still beneath his touch, of not pressing my hips forward into his hand, of trembling in the remnants of his gasping heat.

To know that I will slip between my simple bedsheets like this, with the ghosts of his fingertips on my heavy cock, with the weight of his cries lying thick between my legs. . .

And then, when he finally leans forward to brush his nose against my own, it is a sweeter touch than Mary holding her sleeping babe. A more intimate caress.

“I am always with you,” he says with a thick emotion in his voice. I hold back a moan.

Suddenly, from a gust of wind beneath the door, the candle blows out. A curl of smoke billows up through the church, caressing our voices, the whispered moans and gasps of the last half-hour. 

We watch the smoke rise together, and though I dread the sudden feeling of fear in my chest, I realize, with the brilliance of the sun, that I am not afraid. The darkness is a cool balm against my skin, gently hovering over us with the safe cloak of the night.

I run my fingers through his soft curls, and he turns his cheek into my touch. I know my thigh will be screaming at me by the time I rise. That the pain will break the soft spell, and that I will probably no longer be thrumming and hard by the time I limp back to my sheets.

And yet, I just want to pretend for a few more moments, I just want to remain. . .

“Hold me,” he whispers, breaking me from my thoughts. “Just . . . just for a few minutes. Before you have to go. Hold me here.”

I wrap him in my arms before he can even finish his words. With sighs of relief, we move together, slowly shifting so I can stretch out my legs upon the stone, leaning back against her marble feet upon her alter, until he is resting warmly in my embrace.

Our hearts beat as a clock in the silent stillness as we lie together. He clings to me, as I cling to him. The even power and love of the Trinity. 

“You are the bravest man I have ever known,” he eventually whispers, hidden in the rises and falls of my chest.

And it burns within me, filling my eyes with blessed water, to hear myself be called a man and not a priest in his voice. It feels like her very hands holding firm to my ribs, the flow of my oxygen, the hidden place of my soul.

I press my hand to his cheek and kiss into his curls. And, though the darkness waits beyond the chapel doors to claw at my robes, though lions prowl the halls to trap us, and though I must leave in mere moments to limp back to my room alone, I allow myself, in just this moment, to pretend that he is about to fall asleep against my chest.

And I whisper to him, slowly, as if I have all the time in the world, “You were there with me on the shores of the Somme, you know.” 

She prays, “ _alleluia. . ._ ”

“Your eyes were the first grey dawn after she brought me back to life,” I tell Sherlock Holmes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Verses and references used (note that I have often combined translations throughout this fic for verses):  
> Song of Solomon 3:5: "Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires"  
> Hebrews 12:29: "For our God is a consuming fire."  
> Jeremiah 33:3: "Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not."  
> Psalm 31:24: "Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the LORD."  
> Ps. 34:5: "They looked unto him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed."  
> Isaiah 45:22: "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else."  
> 1 Kings 19:11-12: The Lord tells Elijah to go to the mountain and wait for His voice. Elijah thinks His voice is in a fire, then an earthquake, then a storm, then realizes that the Lord's voice is actually a soft whisper in the aftermath.  
> Ps. 28:7: "The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him."  
> Habakkuk 2:20: "But the LORD is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him."  
> S of S 2:14: " O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely."  
> Genesis 3:3-6: In the garden of Eden, God commanded that Adam and Eve do not eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The serpent (Satan) tricks Eve into thinking that God does not want what is best for her, and therefore she eats the fruit, and they are banished because of her curiosity / disobedience.  
> Proverbs 12:22: "Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord. . ."  
> John 13: The chapter where Christ washes the Disciples' feet at the Last Supper as an act of his love for them before the hour of his crucifixion. Washing feet was only something the lowest servant would do. Christ doing it was an extreme act of love and servitude, and modeled how the Disciples should serve His Church after His death.  
> S of S 1:4: ". . . we will remember thy love more than wine."  
> S of S 4:15: "A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon."  
> Job 8:21: "Till he fill thy mouth with laughing, and thy lips with rejoicing."  
> Romans 12: 1-2: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service."  
> John 3: John quotes from this chapter as he washes Sherlock's feet, including the famous verse John 3:16 "For God so loveth the world that he gave his only begotten son. . ."  
> Psalm 57: The Psalm Sherlock recites while John is washing his feet. "Selah" is a word found commonly in the Psalms, and is most thought to be a musical direction for a moment of pause or reflection. In my personal experience, when singing or reciting a Psalm, it can be used as an emotional exclamation of peace or ecstasy in your prayer.  
> S of S 7:1: "The joints of thy thighs are like jewels."  
> S of S 5:5 "I rose to open to my beloved. . ."  
> Ephesians 4:4-6: "There is one body, and one spirit. . ."
> 
> 'A chuisle mo chroí' roughly translates from Irish Gaelic to 'pulse of my heart.'
> 
> There are more Biblical references than above strewn throughout as small details, so if you would like more information on something, feel free to ask! As always, keep in mind that this fic puts emotion and plot (and smut) above any sort of Biblical, religious, or historical accuracy ;) i.e. I know the bowl of lavender holy water thing is pretty implausible. 
> 
> Ok, ok, I'll be honest, I am DYING to hear what y'all think about this newest chapter! It's been so long! I can't wait to squee over priests in love with you all in the comments :) A million thank you's for reading.
> 
> Next time: John meets a face from his past, then knocks on Sherlock's tower door in the dead of night. . .(oh, and have you noticed they haven't been naked together yet? well. . .)


	10. I Am a Rose of Sharon, a Lily of the Valleys

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back :)
> 
> Joking apologies to all you (myself included) devoted Johnlockers out there, because this is about to be the most "me" chapter ever. You'll . . . . see what I mean, I think. 
> 
> For your musical choices, enjoy more of the fantastic Port series with this rendition of the traditional "Fill iù o ro hù o" [HERE.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYEWEn0INuU/)  
> \--The chorus and refrain of this song can be roughly translated as "You would be my lovely wee lass; I'd go to the stars if you'd willingly come with me." Full English translation is included in the video description, but is unfortunately a bit tangled up formatting-wise with the original lyrics. 
> 
> On the religious side, a gorgeous rendition of the music of Hildegard von Bingen can be heard [HERE.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6qFCYRQKVA/)  
> \---Hildegard von Bingen was a badass German Benedictine abbess, composer, mystic, and philosopher born in 1098. Like Jeanne d'Arc, her history of her formal consideration and recognition as a saint is a bit complicated (depending on the branch of Christianity), but she was officially Canonized in 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI.
> 
> Also, your friendly reminder that I am well aware that the mass presented here is not historically or religiously accurate. What can I say? The Johnlock angst was just more important.
> 
> Enjoy! :)

6th November 1927

 

The clouds are thin and grey.

I keep my eyes fixed on them as we trudge across the weeping moors, hunched over against the icy wind hissing through our cloaks, and mocked by the caw of the sea gulls far above our heads. It is the earth itself trying to hurl us off the cliffs and into the sea. The rolling greens rising to trip our meek feet so that we will fall, to fling us black specks from her bosom and down into the foaming might.

The death of the wicked.

I refuse to let myself stare down at my feet as we walk. Instead I look up, straight ahead, and revel in the slap of the wind against my bare cheeks, icy fingers rushing through my hair.

I keep my eyes fixed on his back, the eternal lines of his neck and shoulders. His cassock about his thighs.

Sherlock has not walked beside me in days, not since we parted ways in the doorway of the midnight chapel, and I pressed my own rosary into his pale hands after bringing it once to my lips, tasting it with my tongue. Not since I whispered to him, “I am with you,” as I kissed his brow. Since I spoke into the soft curve of his ear, “I will rejoice over thee with joy.”

And he looked down at me, there in the midnight peace of her quiet house, and rubbed his palm over the muscle and bone of my aching chest. He traced my thrumming body, and he spoke, with lips that tasted of my own tongue and mouth, “I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”

No, he has not stood even once by my side, not since I turned and bade myself disappear into the dark mists, knowing he was watching me fade away, and somehow comforted that his eyes were beholding my sore, uneven step. That he witnessed. That he saw.

That she was watching, too.

“Is the Lord settling your heart for your mass, Father?”

I startle, then tear my gaze away from the glooming clouds and focus on the face of Brother Hales appearing beside me. Over his shoulder, Father Woodley also looms. I have no memory of them falling back from the rest of the group, all the way back to where I usually straggle behind. To where he used to walk with me.

Up ahead of us, Sherlock suddenly glances over his shoulder, as if he sensed I was no longer at peace. His eyes find me through the fog even as the wind whips curls across his eyes. The wool of his robes clings to his chest.

She moans through the rippling mists, “ _lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world_. . .”

He turns away to keep walking, but I still feel the heat of his eyes upon my wind-numb cheeks. I lean harder on my cane to try and speed up my steps; it is painfully obvious the way Brother Hales and Father Woodley are holding back their strides for me. The way they watch the limping falls of my feet, ever conscious that I do not fall too far behind.

And I wonder, for the millionth time, how it is that Sherlock’s long legs never look constrained when he walks by my side. How he hovers, how he glides . . .

She whispers sweetly, “ _As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons_.” She hums and purrs, a rumbling moan across the moors: “ _His fruit is sweet to my taste . . ._ ”

I squint my eyes against the hazy sun and focus on the black of my robes. “Of course,” I say gently, barely audible over the groaning wind. “He always prepares my heart in His faithful ways.”

Brother Hales smiles, as if I’ve just said something more precious than all the Scriptures combined. Behind him, Father Woodley nods down at the top of my head, as if I’ve just memorized John, chapter three verse sixteen, for a Sunday sweet treat.

Instantly, I think of what Sherlock would say if he could see their looks at me now. How he would see the sadness in their eyes, the gentle pity, and then remember me on my knees before him on the hard stone of the chapel floor. Know that I had once physically held him against my chest, dragged myself from the bowels of the Somme, shot a gun. How he knows the hidden strength in my hands as I had guided him to Communion, the Holy Eucharist of his velvet cock across my tongue.

The thought fills me with sudden warmth, fizzling to the tips of my fingers. I swallow a laugh.

I am a man who laughs, it seems.

“I am certainly looking forward to hearing it,” Brother Hales continues, elegant hands held casually behind his back as I huff for breath beside him. 

Father Woodley hums agreement. “Always a treat to hear the Lord’s wisdom through our war hero, eh?” His eyes twinkle on the last word.

_Our Father, Who art in Heaven . . ._

_Maggie! Dear Christ, no . . . Sweet Maggie --- !_

I stumble on an errant tree root, and Brother Hales reaches out just in time to catch my fall. His hands feel clammy on my skin, even through the layers of my robes. My leg screams.

I tilt my head as I regain my composure and struggle silently for a full breath. The twinkle of warmth quickly dies in Father Woodley’s eyes as he watches me grit my teeth over sharp pain.

“It was His strength within me on the Somme, praise be to God,” I manage to say, only sounding slightly breathless as I stare straight ahead at the emerging stone of St. Ignatius’. I twist my lips in a way that might look like a grateful smile, “Not my own.”

Brother Hales moans agreement and runs his fingers over the cross hanging from his chest. “Amen, praise be to God,” he says through half-closed eyes, as if the power of the mass is already filling him even though we haven’t yet entered the walls.

My eyes find Sherlock’s curls as he lowers his hood within the gates, and I whisper back, gazing at the sunlight dappled across his hair, “Amen, indeed.”

-

The air of St. Ignatius’ is cool and dry upon my skin, crackling away the wet drops from the misty spray of the sea. 

I step off to the side and take a moment to compose myself in an alcove, idly registering that the rest of the congregation and Brothers are all passing through the chapel doors. My body is bathed in white now, the silken stoles wrapped about my limbs. My head adorned. Borrowed jewels across my breast.

I breathe in the dusty air and go through the words I am about to speak – hear them passing through my mind in her blessed voice, illuminating the glory, the everlasting love of her bare marble feet. I rest my hand behind my back as the other lightly grips my cane. The last few feet are silently rushing past me, none of them paying me any notice – not until I am up at the altar, awash in a heavenly power draped over my limbs, covering the pale and weak and limp with His trumpeting Glory. With His terror.

Then: fingers across my palm, a roll of parchment pressed into my hand. 

I suck in a breath as my fingers close reflexively around it. Warm air rushes across my nape. Milk and honey of the Promised Land in a ghostly perfume wrapping tightly about my bones. 

I look up just in time to see him disappearing into the main chapel doors, the last one in the congregation. His robes are billowing about his ankles, his head bowed, the pale skin of his bare wrists crossed behind his back for me to see. He crosses himself as he enters her house, prayers on his lips as he places the holy water upon his brow.

His brow I had kissed with the moisture of my lips – my own anointing. 

With steady fingers I unroll the small paper in the darkness of the alcove. Within the chapel doors, all heads await for me to appear, for me to raise my arms and welcome them, for the Latin to pour effortlessly from my tongue, the Holy Script.

I keep them waiting – they will think I’m still limping through the halls, besides – and I tilt the paper in my fingers towards the light from the stained glass so that I can read.

His hand, his precious script: “ _Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through her that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God._ ”

Beneath it, the paper wrinkled and wet, as if he had pressed it to his lips in a kiss, as if he had held it there, let it be warmed by the mist of his breath.

Water fills my eyes. It is the same water I had felt the first moment I ever heard her voice, clear as day in my head as I came around the corner of the small village church and saw a man, a boy, standing in the light of the stained glass spilling across the grass.

We were but thirteen, and his name had been Gregory. My body and soul caught unawares. 

And she had sung to me, for the first time, “ _For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope and a future._ ”

I look once around me, hear the rustles of impatient feet on the other side of the stone wall, then I bring the paper to my lips, forming mine around the imprint of his own.

“ _Thoughts of peace, and not of evil,_ ” she whispers to me again, now. “ _John. . ._ ”

I quickly roll the paper back up and tuck it against my breast beneath my robes. It instantly warms my skin.

Then I grip my cane, and I hold my head high. I step out from the shadows of the alcove and walk into her house, filled with the trumpets of the everlasting angels. I cross myself to the chorus of “Father”s filling the room like a rushing wave, spilling across my feet.

I lift my head: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” I speak, filling every dark corner of her house.

The blessed chorus: “Amen.”

And though his voice is not among them, I hear it still. 

O Lord, as through the burning bush, as in the calm after the storm, as in the mighty rip through the Holy curtain of Jerusalem, I hear Sherlock’s voice above them all.

-

Prepared words flow from my lips, but I do not hear them.

“And he said: a certain man had two sons, and the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me . . .”

My voice shatters against the rafters. Someone yawns. A pew creaks. 

A droning voice continues, one I recognize as my own: “And after, the younger son gathered all of his inheritance together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.”

Eyes are on my face, murky black instead of blue. 

My eyes flicker from my hands to find Father Barry’s gaze upon my mouth, following her words as they leave my lips, as if to make sure I do not start to warp and mangle the Scriptures. That I do not suddenly change the story, heresy in my mouth, where the Prodigal Son ends up alright, and still receives his Father’s blessing, and does not need to share in the muck of the swine to feed his belly at night.

I defy his fears. I speak: “And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land, and he began to be in want.”

Want for the softness of his thighs against my own. His hairs across my chest. Fingers slipped between my lips. For the rumble of his voice to spill across my nape beneath the sheets. His breath upon my cheek instead of the cold stone before the first light of dawn. To sleep in the weight of his arms, and he in mine. To rest . . .

“And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat, and no man gave unto him.”

I glance up. Father Barry still nods along with my words, tethering me close to His teachings by the collar about my neck. Beside him, Brother Hales looks up at me as if I am the embodiment of everything he wants for himself to be.

Minus the cane.

I close my eyes against them all, as if in Holy focus. “And when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger’!”

The paper still damp from my lips flutters against the skin of my chest, draped over part of my bare nipple. I think of his fingertips trailing over my body, tracing the worn lines, reminding me that I still have muscle and blood beneath . . .

“ _Refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love,_ ” she breathes to me; she sighs.

A cough echoes through the church. I fling open my eyes, and immediately find Sherlock’s stare locked onto my face. His fingertips twitch with unrest over the cross about his neck.

I swallow hard; beg her deep within me to bring her power to my failing voice. My leg throbs.

“I will arise and go to my father,” I proclaim to my flock, speaking as the Prodigal Son I am desperately warning them all not to be, writ like blood splattered across the white and gold of my borrowed robes. “And I will say unto him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee. I am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants’.”

Two pairs of eyes on my face. One a dagger, one fresh silk.

The charred ash of her Covenant, burned to the ground by the consuming fire of his pink lips, fanned into flame by the release of the wicked moans from my chest. Moans which he swallowed . . .

Without conscious thought, my hand not gripping the lectern for strength rises to my chest. I press just once over the beat of my heart. The hidden paper crinkles. My spine wilts, if not for the brush of her fingertips on my shoulders. 

The crushing, burdensome truth that I, Father Watson, have sinned against heaven, that I am no more worthy to be called God’s son --

“And he arose,” I declare to the hollow chapel, “and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and he ran.”

My soul pleads with me, begging. My breath hitches, and I allow myself to look up from my concentration. To immediately find his eyes in the crowd, still fixed on my face. 

I stare into the rushing, blue waters of the Somme before the battle, when it was life-giving and calm, the peace and promise of ripe, dripping fruits for the harvest.

His eyes, which had closed at the moment of his ecstasy, as his head fell back upon his neck, and he gazed up to the rafters through the billows of her veil, my body between his thighs, cradled in the heat.

I speak to him – to Sherlock. I run into his gaze.

“And the son’s father fell upon his neck,” I say, voice bold. Her crisp words slide from the tip of my tongue: “And he kissed him.”

My voice trembles on the word. Sherlock’s beautiful lips part in quiet awe.

Father Barry creaks forward in his seat; I can feel the fire of his gaze, the sting of his spit, the damnation of his worry. As if he had walked in and seen my own lips upon Sherlock’s skin, the wet press of my wicked tongue along his pale throat, his curls gripped in my hands. As if he watched me fall asleep in his arms, with tears still marking my cheeks . . .

“ _You have not harmed me,_ ” he had told me, pleaded with me as his breath fogged in the chapel night.

I look at Father Barry, breathing evenly from his seat with his hands on his knees. I square my weight on both legs so my shoulders align.

She sighs in pleasure, in ascension.

“And the son said unto him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son’.”

My jaw clenches, but her cool palms soothe it. I realize I am gripping the lectern with both hands, standing tall in my robes, resplendent as I have never before been in the light from her jewels. My cane threatens to clatter to the ground.

I want it to.

 _”Sanctus!”_ the chorus swells, mightier than that first moment I stepped into a church, my bare feet on the stone, no wood grasped in my fingers.

“ _Peace I give you,_ ” she weeps, in this darkest hour of need, in this gnashing of teeth. Her fingers wrap around Sherlock’s letter against my breast, warming the spit from his mouth. “ _My peace . . . mine . . ._ ”

“But the father said to his servants,” I suddenly say, with a voice so strong it causes half the congregation to fling up in their seats, rapt at attention, as if the Lord Himself had spoken through the rafter beams, raining down glory and dust. My chest trembles with power.

“Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him,” I declare, “and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it. Let us eat, and be merry.”

How I had held him against my chest in the pools of starlit stained glass. How I had told myself that I could fall asleep with him, could wake up in the middle of the night with him, could see dawn wind itself through his curls.

And oh, in those moments, those blessed minutes . . . I had been wearing the best robe, a ring on my finger, the finest shoes on my feet. I had been merry –

“For my son was dead,” my voice rings out, “and is alive again.”

My soul finds Sherlock’s across the chapel as I speak the words, intertwining as two woven ropes in the sunlit air. David sewn to Jonathan. 

I see his terrified eyes that day on the moor, that night by the storming sea. 

See his eyes close the first time he leaned forward and kissed the wood of my cane.

“ _Eala bhán,_ ” she whispers to me.

I lick my lips and taste milk and honey.

“He was lost,” I say as an odd, thrumming quietness descends on the church. I see Sherlock shiver, can practically feel it running through my veins.

“He was lost,” I repeat in a wet voice, to a stunned intake of breath from the crowd, “but now is found.”

-

The courtyard of St. Ignatius’ swarms and pulses with the congregants after the mass. 

I wait off to the side in the shadows for just a moment after I’ve blessed everyone exiting through the heavy doors, re-gathering my wits about me and reveling in the familiar black robes back on my skin. 

Sherlock had bowed his head silently as I blessed him in the line, not even meeting my eyes with his in the doorway shadows. But the tip of his thumb had found and traced a vein on the bare skin of my wrist as he brushed by me to walk past. 

I swallow, and my skin presses against the collar at my throat. His letter is still tucked along my chest, fluttering over the beating warmth of my heart and lungs. Breathing.

“ _More than conquerors, John_ ,” she reminds me, in a voice that wisps along the salt breeze. 

I grip my cane, smooth the front of my cassock, and take a step out into the humming world. The sunlight filling the courtyard when I fully emerge is blinding, even through the thick seaside clouds. I raise a hand to shield myself as I blink into the silver light. My palm sweats on the wood of my cane, and the air vibrates in my ears.

I make the usual visits – this request for prayer and that, discussions of the beauty of the voices at mass, remarks on the weather and crops. Awkward, quiet acknowledgement mixed with praising surprise that I managed to last the entire mass without wildly grabbing for my cane to steady my leg. Without having to sit down.

How I look well, you know, compared to how you were when you first arrived to our shores, but that was many years ago now, weren’t it, Father?

As the crowds slowly thin, and the masses depart, they take up their families in rough held hands and start off down the cart tracks on foot, a few on their horses. They disperse, seeping out quietly through the rivers of stone and disappearing into the moors, until all the figures still inhabiting the sunlit courtyard are dressed in robes. 

Sherlock catches my eye from where he waits alone at the outskirts of the group. I want to give him some sort of silent communication, some promise of a meeting soon, some encapsulation of the way his letter against my breast was more moving, more transformative, than the first time I ever donned a cassock and robes. But a voice cuts through my thoughts, severing the cord from me to him in two.

“Are you ready to leave, Father?”

Father Colmas calls out to me crisply, rising above the din. They are growing impatient, I realize, waiting for me while I seemingly stare at nothing at the top of the steps. I jolt, grip my cane and make my way down to join them.

The group of my fellow Brothers start to herd themselves towards the gates, waiting for me to hobble along behind them across the moors. Half of them are hiding doubtful looks that I’ll make it all the way back in one piece. Father Barry holds his hands behind his back, straining his chest. His eyes carefully avoid my leg as it limps and drags across the stone.

I open my mouth to say I am ready to leave, when a few of my Brothers step aside, starting their procession out into the grass. A man is revealed, hidden in the corner of the courtyard by the shadows from the walls. He holds his cap in his hands.

My breath stops. A sharp inhale echoes across the earth.

The man looks at me beneath thick lashes, nerves and uncertainty hovering about his limbs. His sturdy spine.

“Father,” he whispers across the courtyard, bowing his head once more.

My limbs freeze, turn to burning ice. The voice of Gabriel booming down from the clouds, hushing all the earth.

I start to speak his name, try to form the sounds of it on my tongue, but it dies in my mouth in a whisper. I cannot manage it. It is like blood in my mouth – the blood of my own veins, the heat of the summer grass, the smell of hay. 

I tear my eyes away from him, standing there calmly before me in the flesh, the miracle of the water into wine, the rolled away stone, and I can still see the way the stained glass fluttered across his face, draping over his cheeks, the way his eyes looked black in the light from the barn, his letter to me, stained with my tears as I clutched it along the Somme . . .

“Forgive me, you should go on without me,” I hear myself say to my Brothers. 

Confusion rushes across their faces in one great wave. It finally dawns on me, as I watch them look back and forth between me and this stranger in the gentle courtyard breeze – they are confused, because they cannot imagine me knowing a single person. Cannot imagine me having a connection, someone in the world beyond the walls of St. Sebastian’s who knows my name. The realization aches with an unexpectedly sharp stab in my chest.

“An old acquaintance,” I go on to fill the silence. I do not gesture at him. “I should like to say hello. I’ll find my way to you all for supper and prayers.”

Father Colmas bows his head, then glances up at the grey clouds. “If the weather turns frightful, you should take leave to spend the night. Father Morey will put you up.”

I cannot feel my own skin. “Of course. Yes.”

A throat clears, and my skin prickles as Father Barry takes a step forward from the small crowd. I feel that I am suddenly the Christ, and he Judas. That he is coming to place a kiss upon my face before them all, one which will condemn me to be beaten, my life extinguished.

I chuckle ironically deep in my chest that he probably sees myself as Judas to Holmes. 

“Are you sure it is wise,” Father Barry asks in a loud whisper, “to journey back on your own?”

My fingers tighten on my cane. It occurs to me that I have never been the subject of all their attention as I am now, that even after nine years, I have never had the entire monastery hanging on my every word which was not a mass or a lecture. 

I try to keep my head high and respond, but my leg shakes, and my words crumble. “I . . . I’m sure –"

“Perhaps one of us should stay behind,” he continues, hands held behind his broad back. His gaze flickers almost imperceptibly to Sherlock where he stands back in the shadows. “I myself would volunteer, or perhaps Father Harrows, in case it is dark as you try to return.”

I fight with myself not to look to my left or my right – at either of the only men on earth who have ever called me by my given name.

“Please –” I start to say, try to speak boldly in the same way I had delivered the mightiest words of my mass, loud enough to be heard over the bombs. But it comes out only a trembling whisper.

Father Barry looks to Father Colmas. “Brother, indeed, I am only trying to ensure –"

“I’ll see ‘im back, if he has need of it,” a voice booms across the courtyard.

All heads turn.

Gregory emerges from the shadows, until the sunlight pours across his shoulders and face. He towers above them all, somehow resplendent in his simple Sunday clothes and suspenders against our sea of rippling black. His knuckles gripping his cap are white, and his gaze bores into Father Barry like a terrifying hawk.

I want to fall at his feet. To kneel, as the centurion knelt, who cried out at the foot of the cross, “ _Surely, surely this man was the Son of God!_ ”

Father Barry cowers back. I feel a sudden, fleeting regret – remember the way his face ached with worry when speaking of Holmes as he remembered my wicked hand on his young skin . . . 

But then the regret is gone, and Gregory is looking at me as if he might reach up and move the very clouds in the sky with his hands. Reposition the orbit of the earth. Tumble the mountains into the sea.

As if he might embrace me, standing there in the open breeze upon the stone steps.

Father Barry steps back and raises a hand in truce. “Of course, of course you’ll see our Brother back,” he says, already turning to join the rest of my shocked Brothers. I can see them all fighting with themselves not to glance back at Gregory where he stands stock-still by my side, shoulders squared.

I seek out Sherlock, in pain at the expectation that he will be hurt, or confused. Wounded at the fact that I would rather stay here with this stranger – this man, whom I haven’t yet gotten the courage to tell him, about instead of walk back with him across the moors in silent step.

But I nearly gasp when I finally glimpse him through the sea of departing robes. His eyes are soft and warm, pulsing with a hint of understanding as they glance between myself and Gregory. His fingers are idly fluttering at his side, nearly concealed by his robes. My rosary is within his fingers, warmed by his touch.

A fresh wind howls, and he nods at me once over our Brothers’ heads, somehow saying every word of the Scriptures without ever opening his mouth.

 _Wait for me_ , I try to tell him with my gaze. _Wait for me, and I will tell you everything. I will tell you the pit of my soul, the inside of my skin, the first time Gregory stroked his palm up my wrist, warm and covered in mud from the day in the fields. I will tell --_

And then they are gone, all of them, every last bit of cloak. Every curl. 

I don’t waste a moment. The courtyard has eyes. The stained glass has ears. And I need . . .

“Come with me,” I say, not quite meeting Gregory’s eyes, stopping myself from reaching out and grabbing his hand.

He doesn’t question me. He immediately follows. We wind back through the exposed corridors and alcoves of St. Ignatius’, rushing quickly through the sunspots and shadows as the stone moans. My cane echoes harshly as I heave myself along. He never once stares down at my leg.

I lead him to a spot I had discovered once on a previous visit here for Confession, hidden along the back of the church, protected from the wind by the walls and looking out towards the distant sea. 

I can hear him right behind me. Hear the shuffle of his feet. His breaths. The way his trousers rasp on his legs. Can hear the echo of his voice saying “ _Father_ ” to me across the courtyard, as if the last word he ever said to me hadn’t just been “ _John_.”

I glance around once we’re secluded behind the walls, madly searching for pale faces hidden behind curtains and doors. When I see none, I turn back to him in breathless awe, and my jaw drops.

His deep brown eyes are wet. A lock of greying hair falls across his face as we both freeze.

Our breathing is incredibly loud. He is close enough that the fabrics on our chests nearly touch, and I watch his glimmering, dark eyes trace the outline of the white collar at my throat.

“John,” he finally whispers, with a question in his voice, as if I am about to tell him that he cannot say it, that he does not deserve to use my name. Not anymore.

Oh God, I am sixteen . . .

“Gregory,” I breathe, and then we are rushing towards each other like comets, crashing together in the blasting skies, his arms around my back, my cane falling to the mossy ground, my cheek against his neck, his thumb across my collar, my thighs pressed against his own.

I am sixteen; I am whole; I am strong; my leg secure . . .

“ _Pillars of marble,_ ” she hums to remind me. “ _Excellent as the cedars_.”

“Oh God,” I whisper against his throat in a wet voice. “How –”

“John Watson. Glory be.”

“How . . . how did you – “

“My wife’s family live nearby, in Goodwick , and I . . . God, I heard you were –”

“You have a wife. You have children.”

“Two. Yes.”

“You . . . you –”

“You’re alive. John, thank Christ you’re alright –”

“My leg. There was a bomb –”

“Good God, you’re _alive_.”

His voice cracks on the final word. I grip his warm shoulders and pull back from his chest. I can feel the ripple of his bones and muscle through the thin linen of his Sunday shirt, damp from the spray of the sea and mist. My cassock clings and pulls about our ankles huddled together. 

I look into a face I have scarcely dared to dream of for almost twenty years. A face I used to conjure up in my mind only on the handful of the darkest nights, when I lay on my small cot bed and cried secret tears of loneliness into the thin sheets, not feeling His hands upon my shoulders, or hearing her voice in gentle song. Just cold, black stone. The eternal drone of the oblivious sea. 

He looks older now, and yet he looks exactly the same. There are soft lines about his eyes, streaks of early grey through his hair, rough stubble down his cheeks and jaw. He smells of the church pews, and of wet grass. A cigarette he must have had in the courtyard before mass. 

Soap his wife must have bought for his clothes.

I swallow hard, willing my choked voice to speak. “Your letter . . .”

His eyes widen. “You received it?”

I nod.

Hurt flashes across his face. His rough hands grip my waist. “You never wrote back.”

I helplessly shake my head as water once more floods my eyes. “I’m sorry. I . . . I couldn’t –” 

I look just over his shoulder at the endless grey moors, trying to hide my shame in the swaths of thick mist. “I didn’t want you to see,” I finally say, trembling with the truth of the words. “I . . . look at me. You see how I’m . . . and what they all say. How they act –”

His hands are on my face, pulling my gaze to him. “I am looking,” he says in a fierce whisper. His thumbs trace beneath my stinging eyes. “I do see.”

We look at each other. It is wildly unreal that it has been so many years since I last saw the shape of his eyes. So unreal, that even if it were written down by her own hand in the Scriptures, still I would not believe it.

“ _I love you_ ,” another man had whispered to me through the haze of my dreams, on the thin sheets of my small cot, buried against my tired neck. When he thought I was asleep.

My leg buckles, and Gregory’s hands quickly move to grasp my shoulders. I wait for him to radiate concern, to look at me with pain and pity, to fuss for me to sit down. To look disappointed that I am no longer the strong young man who walked away from him by the trees. Who ran and tumbled with him through the fields.

Instead he gives my shoulders a hard shake, then bends down casually to pick up my cane. “Come on, then,” he says, thrusting the wood into my hand as if he’s touched it a million times before. He nods his head towards a low rock wall at the very back of the property, half-hidden by the swell of the grass. “Can’t have your leg breaking in two, eh? Or that Father’ll have my neck for not getting you back by curfew.”

A surprised laugh stumbles out of me. His eyes glow, and he winks. There is a quiet look there, an odd one, too -- disbelieving that after all these years, after an ordination and a war, that he is suddenly by my side again, casually joking around.

The wood is slightly warm from where he touched it. I understand him perfectly. One hour ago, I delivered a mass without even realizing Gregory Lestrade was in the room.

The same way _he_ had been there in the same room . . . an altar boy in curls . . . kneeling before me so I could place my fingers in his mouth . . .

I follow Gregory, limping hard as the adrenaline of the last ten minutes starts to ease from my coiled-up muscles. He doesn’t reach up to help me sit, just like Sherlock never has, and he quickly lights a cigarette as I settle beside him. He puffs a calm lungful of smoke out into the salt breeze after stuffing his matchbook back in his pocket.

“Well,” he says, speaking out at the distant churning sea, filling in the conversation for both of us, just as he always used to do. “That’s all that’s been happenin’ to me, then, since I last saw you on a farm. Got with Lydia – my wife’s name. The two little ones. Live in London now, you know. ‘S pickin’ up from the war and all, but there’s good places to live. On the police force there.”

I gape at him. “The police force?”

He gives me a sly look. “Aye. Can’t say you expected me to be a farmhand the rest of my life, can you? You know me better than that.”

I smile as I rub my hand over my aching thigh, stretching my leg out before me in the wet grass. I can feel the rough accent of my youth threatening to crackle at the tip of my tongue.

“Aye,” I say, refusing to feel that I sound ridiculous, “I do know you well.”

He holds out the cigarette to me on silent fingers. The tip of it flares red in the breeze, and it fills my nose with heat.

“ _Verily, verily,_ ” He suddenly roars within my chest, booming across the forbidding clouds, “ _I say to you: whosoever committeth a sin is the slave of sin, and the servant abideth not --_ ”

I take the cigarette with a steady hand. Our fingers brush. Gregory raises his eyebrows, and I shrug, then place it between my lips.

The paper is wet from his mouth.

Smoke fills my lungs for the first time since I was sixteen, puffing within my chest like hot tendrils of beautiful fire. I close my eyes, even as I cough once, then exhale on the breeze, blowing my sin back out to sea – hovering over the same waters that witnessed Sherlock Holmes kiss my mouth in the storm.

He doesn’t say anything when I hand it back to him, but scoots closer to me on the rock wall. I trace the simple wedding band round his finger with my eyes.

“Are you happy?” I ask, so quietly I think that maybe he didn’t hear.

But he heard. He sighs, then rubs over the ring with his thumb. He knew that I was staring. I wait while he takes another few drags on the cigarette, then he leans down to stub it out on the bottom rocks of the wall.

“Lydia’s a good woman,” he finally says. He carefully avoids my eyes. “I . . . well, I chose her, didn’t I? Didn’t have to get married, find a lady and all that, but . . . You know, John, I . . . I actually like her, yeah? I – I love her. My little family.”

I shiver once more at the sound of my name in his voice, like clutching madly at a hidden part of myself that never saw war.

I turn to look at him so he can see the sincerity in my eyes – the relief that, after all these years, he has never once been as lonely as me.

“Good,” I say solemnly. 

His eyes quickly blink. The wind moans an answer around our shivering limbs.

“And you?” he asks as a sea bird cries out overhead. He gestures behind me towards where St. Sebastian’s lies invisible in the distance. His face suddenly looks the same way it did when I first held his hand and told him I was to become a priest. “Have you been happy?”

I think of those mornings I used to have, lifetimes ago, when I would press my cheek to the cold stone before dawn and feel His presence over my shoulders. When I would relish His words on my lips, and the sound of His song, and His robes on my skin. When I would bubble over with Holy gladness every morning at Lauds.

I think of the times I used to laugh with the soldiers in the trenches, on the endless days where the skies were silent and our socks grew wet. I think of singing in his church, the gift of my voice. The voice I had once used to sing to Gregory as he took a nap in the sun’s rays dripping through the barn roof slats. The voice which had made Sherlock shiver next to my arm.

I think of walking away from him our last meeting in the chapel, with the taste of his body still on my tongue, and the sound of his sad breaths echoing behind me at her feet. Of waking up that morning knowing he had slept by my side, but had to creep away before dawn.

My chest clenches, and a horrible sound escapes the back of my throat.

“ _Fear not,_ ” she begs me, with tears of worry in her voice.

“I . . . I am lost,” I finally admit, whispering over the sound of the sea.

Gregory tenses in concern beside me. His hand inches closer to my leg on the stone. “John?”

The words pour from me before I can stop them, before I can pause to pray to her for guidance, before I can remember that I am Ordained.

“I am . . . there were times, yes, when I’ve been happy. Where I know this is my path, His calling for me, because He saved me, didn’t He? When I was wounded on the Somme He . . . but – but Gregory, I . . . not anymore. Something has happened, and I can’t . . . I can’t see a way –”

He sighs compassion as I stumble through my words and leans back on his hands. Then, quietly, breaking through my stammering, he speaks words that shatter the very separation between Heaven and Earth.

“It’s the one with the curls, isn’t it?” he asks softly.

I gasp and turn to him with terrified eyes, that I had been so obvious, so transparent . . .

He puts a hand on my thigh, directly over the scar. “I know you, John,” he goes on. He swallows. “I . . . I know us, yeah? I noticed when I was waiting for you in the courtyard – he couldn’t keep his eyes off you. And I know the way you looked at ‘im before they all walked away. But it’s only because I was looking. Because I knew to look.”

I stare down at his hand against the black of my robes, the way it makes his wedding band shine. 

“His name is Holmes,” I whisper.

He chuckles through his nose. “Is it now? That’s what you call him?”

A sad smile flickers at the corner of my mouth. I cover his hand with my own and hold on. “Sherlock.”

My heart explodes in my chest at the moment I say his name out loud before another person, his given name on my Ordained tongue. Hot blood pounds through my veins.

“He . . . Oh God, he’s a student. He’s . . . he’s my ordinand, and I . . . I –”

Gregory places his fingers on my chin and turns my face towards his own. His touch is firm and gentle, and I blink, ashamed at the water still welling up in my eyes.

He whispers urgently, “And do you know how he feels for you? Has there been . . . is there an understanding?”

I close my eyes and let a tear fall, then gaze at his strong face and speak with a wet voice. “I do know. There is.”

He pauses, so quickly I almost don’t notice, then asks, “Have the two of you . . .?”

I burn in sudden shame, mixed with the glorious echoes of his moans in my ear. I do not allow myself to look away. “We have.”

A strong emotion passes over Gregory’s face at my words. It was the one thing I never gave him. The one thing he never even asked for, but which I knew was the cry of his soul. The kiss he never received.

And still, his hand cups my neck, and his thumb traces the edge of the white collar. There is understanding in his eyes, and unimaginable kindness.

“Oh, John . . .” he whispers as his face falls.

There is also fear. Fear for me. Fear for the one with the curls.

I tell him everything. In a rushing wave of words, I pour my last few months over his listening shoulders:

The first morning Sherlock took off his hood, the gift of his voice, the storm, his name. Father Barry’s face behind a window. Her voice in my ears now instead of His.

The fact that I heard her voice the day I found him beside the stained glass, back when my thigh was strong, and my hands were rough, and I was thirteen. 

That Sherlock slept by my side, and crept out before morning. That his rosary is in the pocket of my robes as we speak.

I tell him all of it, out loud in words, and Gregory sits silently and listens with his hand in mine. She listens with her hands on my shoulders. I talk more than I have in eleven long years. I talk until the first rays of the sun reach down to touch the surface of the sea. I talk until the last words leave my lips, tumbling down across my tongue, and Gregory takes a deep breath before pulling me into his side, wrapping his arms around my back.

He holds me against his chest until the sunset bathes the grass. He doesn’t say a word, and neither do I. And anyone could see us, anyone could travel down the path and witness a priest being held by a common man – by a member of the London police force. But the panic fades before it can even build up in my limbs, and I stay. I lean into him, weary and fading, and think that this is how Sherlock must have felt when I held him that day among the ruins, with the wildflowers still pressed to his back, and his first release staining his robes.

That this is how the soldiers must have felt as they lay dying, held aloft from the red mud in my trembling arms. 

But Gregory’s arms are steady, and just as the evening wind starts to blow, he gently pats my back, hidden words in the touch of his long-lost fingers.

“You have to get back to your family,” I say against his warm chest, not a question. 

He nods into my hair. “You have to get back to the church.”

The cold stone. The darkness. The small empty bed. The barren walls. 

Panic overwhelms me, like the moment the Egyptian riders realized there were about to be swallowed forever in the depths of the sea, and my fingers suddenly clutch at the linen of his shirt. “Gregory –”

“Shall I walk you back, then --?”

“Gregory see me tomorrow,” I beg. I look into his face with my hands knotted against his chest. “Please. Before you all go back to London, let me see you, let me –”

“In the morning,” he promises, covering my hands with his own. “I’ll meet you in the morning.”

“Before Lauds?”

He gives a firm nod. “Before Lauds.”

I reluctantly drag my hands away from his shirt as the evening wind shivers across my skin. I suddenly miss Sherlock with an earnest desperation in my core. I have to get back, have to see . . .

“I’ll be fine,” I say, glancing at the walking track hidden in the grass.

He doesn’t question me. Doesn’t ask if I can physically make it, if I’m sure. It seems as if we have used up every word on earth, all that we would have spoken in fifteen years, and all that’s left is silence. 

“In the morning,” he says as we both stand, and he hands me my cane. Our fingers do not brush.

“In the morning,” I say back.

I force myself to turn and go before I’m even ready, knowing his eyes are fixed to my back as I trudge away – the black sparrow disappearing into the rolling, green mists, reflecting the weeping sky.

The raven I once dreamed to be.

And I realize, walking away from Gregory Lestrade for the second time in nearly twenty years, back to the stone walls, and back to His cold wooden cross – I realize it is not nearly as terrifying, not nearly as filled with despair, as the moment I walked away from Sherlock in the chapel, knowing I could not watch the light paint across his face with the early dawn.

-

Lifetimes later, when the walls of St. Sebastian’s finally come back into view, rising up out of the moors like a looming vision, I stop at the iron gates and trace my eyes up the ivy-covered stone. 

“ _The house of God!_ ” I hear her cry in a ghostly echo from the mist-covered rooftops. “ _The church of the living God! The spirit and ground of the truth!_ ”

I run my palm up the rusting metal, covered in a fine mist of rain, then press that same palm over my chest where his letter still lies flat against my own skin. I rest my forehead against the wall.

“Hail Mary, full of grace,” I whisper under my breath, battled about by the rising winds. I press my cheek to the stone as I give voice to my secret.

“Mother of God, the Lord is Thee.”

“ _John_ ” she calls back to me, soft and velvet like the foaming sea. “ _Know ye not that ye are the temple of God? And that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?_ ”

I look up to the skies with more of her praises on my lips, the desperate, confused, gnarled exaltations of my deepest soul, when I see a movement in the tower window. A shadow in a candle flame.

The silhouette is long and lean, and topped with a head of wild curls.

Watching me.

Sherlock presses his hand to the glass of his window, fogging the pane, and moves forward until the light from the remaining stars and moon glows across his face. 

He had waited for me.

I gaze up at him, awestruck, a humble, black speck in the center of a lonely courtyard. I gaze up at the House of God.

Behind the window, he holds up my rosary and presses it to his lips, mouth closing over the precious beads. I rub my hand over my heart, hoping and praying that the will understand that his letter is against my breast, kept warm and dry from the threatening rain by my own bare skin.

He is opening his mouth to speak silent words behind the glass when a sudden voice startles me, slicing through the Holy Fog.

“Father! You’re back!”

Brother Kiernan stands in one of the alcoves, shielding his face with his hand from the icy wind. He shivers beneath his thick cloaks, and for the first time all day, I realize I am terribly cold. I glance for one more second up to the window, hidden from Kiernan’s view. Sherlock’s face is crumpled in concern, but I give an invisible nod that I’m alright before stepping into the doors of the church.

Brother Kiernan puts a hand on my back as my cane slaps on the stone, and the warmth of the fire roaring in the front room bathes my skin.

“We were just beginning to worry when you missed supper, weren’t we Father Colmas?”

Father Colmas looks up from his chair by the fire, where the flames turn his robes into ribbons of orange. He gives me an odd, soft look. “Brother, our Father Watson is practically never deserving of worry, as I’m sure you’ll learn soon enough.”

I give him a small smile for his unexpected kindness, then quickly take my leave from them both down the hall, promising to be prepared soon for Vespers and Compline in the chapel, refusing their offers of the bowl of supper they set aside for me.

I shut my chamber door and immediately collapse down onto my small bed when I reach my room. I frantically pull his letter from beneath my misty robes, as if it could have somehow disappeared, then bring the blessed paper back up to my lips with a rushing sigh.

“ _More than conquerors_ ,” I hear his voice remind me, giving Blessed voice to her promise. I form my lips around the mark of his own.

Slowly, gently, I place my other hand between my thighs as my lips taste the paper he had held up to his mouth. I rest my palm over my hidden skin, growing warm. I press, just once, and close my eyes at the glorious roll of my thickening hips up into my hand, cradled by my fingers. The shaky exhale on my lips as it flutters across the paper. The ghost of his sweet tongue flowing down my throat and between my legs, thickening under my robes . . . 

The bell for Vespers tolls, and I reluctantly slide my hand away. I automatically begin my preparations, changing into dry robes and donning myself for prayer. The same way I have done for nine years alone in my room. Gradually, the warmth in my thighs fades. Softens away.

Vespers – where I will see him, where I will sing by his side, where he will shiver.

Vespers beside my love in the House of the Lord. Her home.

 

\--

 

7th November 1927

All the world is silent and black. 

I wait for him wrapped in my cloak in the middle of the empty moors, out of sight of the church walls. The birds start to awaken around my feet as the black of the sky fades to grey. I wait for what feels like hours, days, entire years, wondering if he’ll really come, if he remembered my pleas, if he would do this for me.

Wondering if he thought back on what I told him the day before with shame or guilt. With disgust.

With unbearable, shattering pity. 

But then, like the dove from the expectant sky, he comes, suddenly appearing from the fog on a bicycle along the thin dirt track.

Everything happens fast, as in the blink of an eye, as in the haze of a dream. As in a vision sent from the Holy Ghost to warp my eyes, to trick me . . .

And I do not care. I am running to him. Calling out his name. Would I fall upon his neck? Would I kiss him?

Gregory leaps from his bike and lets it drop into the grass. He is sixteen years old as he runs to me, as he pulls me into his arms in a frantic embrace, pulling me into his skin. I grip him back with fierce hands, everything else forgotten.

“I’ve only a few minutes,” he says, panting. He must have ridden fast and hard.

“So have I,” I breathe.

He clutches at me, rough and desperate, raw like none of our moments had been the day before. The pre-dawn light only illuminates the bright of his eyes, the strong curves of his cheeks and jaw.

“John, listen to me,” he rushes out with my face grasped in his hands. “You . . . Christ forgive me, what I’m about to say, but you must be with him. You must.”

“Gregory –”

“Whatever you have to do, John. Wherever you have to be. He is your love.” He shakes me a bit, even as his words grow rough and thin with piercing emotion, then he clutches me to his chest. “John, you must be with your love. Don’t you see?”

“I’m afraid,” I hear myself cry out, echoing up to the black sky. “Gregory, I’m afraid . . . This – this is all I know. All I am. You don’t understand. I don’t know how –”

“Write to me,” he begs me. “John, let me help you. You are not chained here. Let me help –”

“Why?” I suddenly ask.

We both pant for breath. I rub my palms over his heaving chest, and my disbelieving voice shakes. “Gregory . . . why do you want to help me? I . . . I left you. I never wrote back. You wanted this and I . . . I didn’t, and now we can’t –”

“Listen to me,” he pleads again. I stop mid-word and gaze up into his face. The wind whips at our hair and clothes. Something in his face breaks, and his thumb suddenly traces over my lips.

“Christ, John, I . . . Because I . . .” He shakes his head, and a sort of determination seems to settle upon his shoulders. He holds me. “Because I’ll always be a bit in love with you, won’t I?”

He gives a wet laugh under his breath, expecting me to ridicule, but instead I hold his cheek in my hands, suddenly at peace for the first time since I was sixteen. 

“And I you,” I say, more seriously than I even said my Vows.

His kiss when it presses to my lips is the wine of my first Communion. It is holy, and pure, as if the wine is flowing straight from a skein in heaven across my earthly tongue. His lips rest against my mouth in a kiss more chaste and reverent than the kiss Mary Magdalene pressed to Christ’s feet through her layer of perfumes.

It tingles through my body, warming me from the black wind. The kiss of the father to his lost son. Brother to Brother. 

“ _Greet all the brethren with a Holy kiss_ ,” she sighs, wrapping around our faces and necks.

When he pulls back, there is still fear in his eyes, but it is soothed now by a strange peace – as if a decades’ old longing in the pit of his chest had finally been quelled. The calming of the storm. The walking over the sea. 

I know my own eyes look the same.

He presses his forehead to mine. “You must, John,” he whispers. 

I hold his wrist with my fingers. “I’ll write to you. I will. Let me see you again.”

“Yes.”

“This . . . this cannot be goodbye. I cannot bear it.”

“You will. It isn’t.”

“Gregory –”

“Let me help you. John, let me do this for you.”

Behind me, the bell to rise and prepare for Lauds tolls, moaning across the moors. Gregory quickly steps back from our embrace, gripping hard to my hand. My cassock billows between us, pushing us apart from each other with every step.

He opens his mouth as if to say something more, licks his lips, then closes them again. There is nothing to be said. He squeezes my fingers, as I squeeze his back, and then he is gone, turning away from me and leaping back onto his bicycle, riding off into the rising sun.

He looks back at me once, hair whipping across his face. I wonder what I must look like, a lonely man surrounded by impenetrable stone. Swallowing black robes in the icy breeze.

Except . . .

Without hesitation I suddenly turn and walk straight back towards the walls, hurrying recklessly across the moors. I burst through the doorway, twist down moonlit corridors and alcoves I would know with my eyes closed. 

“ _Listen! My beloved! Look!_ ” she cries, bounding along beside me, rushing my feet across the stone. She laughs and beams: “ _Here he comes, leaping across the mountains, bounding over the hills!_ ”

I can hear the soft rustle of my Brothers preparing for Lauds as I fly past their separate chambers, only the grace of her whisper to quiet my tread. She muffles the clack of my cane. 

I have only a few minutes. Just precious seconds to seek . . . to find –

He is at the bottom of the stairs to his tower, resplendent in the black of his robes, his cloak about his ankles. He startles when he sees me, and sucks in a breath of surprise. I do not hesitate. I walk straight past him and around a shadowy corner, hidden in one of the alcoves.

Immediately, he follows. He has barely joined me in the cramped nook before the unprepared words flow from my lips.

“Listen to me,” I whisper, just barely under my breath. 

He nods, absolutely wide-eyed. His skin is the silver moon, and his hair woven silk. The heat from his bones wraps around my own, giving me courage.

I take a deep breath, and banish every Scripture from my mind, every one of His words, His poetry, His promises.

Save only my own.

“I love you,” I tell him, standing chest to chest in the church shadows. His lips drop open. His fingertips cling to my robe.

I am flying. I continue, “I love you in a way I have never loved another soul. I love your spirit, your life, your voice, your name. I love your skin, your mind.” I gasp for breath, and pant out with a rough voice, “Sherlock, my heart, let me come to your room tonight. Let us be together, soul to soul.”

She is awestruck. Silent.

Sherlock’s eyes well over with tears. A light glows across his face, one which I have never before seen, one which is more powerful than the moment He separated light from darkness, more glorious than the golden glow that emanated from the Holy Arc. More whole.

He reaches for my hand and grasps it, hidden within our robes. I feel the pulse of his life against my simple palm.

“My heart,” he says back with a wet voice. “Mo ghile mear, come be with me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Verses and references used:  
> Song of Solomon 2:1 I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys.  
> SofS 2:3 Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my beloved among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste.  
> SofS 2:5 Strengthen me with raisins, refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love.  
> Psalm 23:4 “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”  
> Zephaniah 3:17 “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”  
> Romans 8:37-39 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. . .  
> Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.  
> Mark 15:39 And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, "Surely this man was the Son of God!"  
> SofS 5:15"His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold: his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars."  
> John 8:34-35 Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever.  
> Luke 15:11-32 The Parable of the Prodigal Son - Often sermons on this have 1 of 2 lessons: 1 - don't be like the prodigal son who indulged in sinful living and ended up eating with the pigs (who ran from the love of his father and turned to the world). 2 - don't be like the other good son, who was upset and jealous that his father welcomed back the sinful son with a party but never threw him a party, because you should rejoice when a lost sheep comes back to the Lord.  
> Matthew 28:20 "Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen."  
> 1 Thessalonians 5:26 "Great all the brethren with a holy kiss."  
> 1 Corinthians 3:16 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and [that] the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?  
> 1 Timothy 3:15 ". . .behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth."  
> Judas kisses Christ (on the cheek) when Christ is praying in the garden, knowing he is about to be crucified according to God's plan. Judas kisses Jesus as a sign to the guards with him which man is the one to be arrested and tried.  
> SofS 2:8 Listen! My beloved! Look! Here he comes, leaping across the mountains, bounding over the hills. 
> 
>  
> 
> Full disclosure: I'm going through some not-fun personal things right now (gotta love frantic apartment and job searching!) so I already know I unfortunately won't be able to reply to any of your lovely comments here. HOWEVER comments are a fic writer's pride and joy. If anything, especially now with everything going on, I would LOVE to hear how this chapter was for you :) Thank you so much for reading! And thank you for indulging my Johnstrade.
> 
> Next time: Father Watson climbs the steps to Brother Holmes' chamber in the tower in the dead of night . . . 
> 
> Also, you'll see we're quickly approaching the end! Just a reminder that I've promised a happy Johnlock ending. Yes, really!


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